


bloom

by skaralding



Series: Five times Sasuke got knocked up by Itachi, and one time he didn't [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alpha Uchiha Itachi, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst and Porn, Clone Sex, Dubious Consent, Loss of Control, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Missions Gone Wrong, No Uchiha Massacre, Oiroke no Jutsu | Sexy no Jutsu, Omega Uchiha Sasuke, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Kink, Shameless Smut, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24614500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: Sasuke's first S-rank is a low-stakes diplomatic mission, a milk run that even an uncultured bruiser like him can't fuck up. When the venue is attacked, forcing him and Itachi to escape in disguise, he finds himself in the thorny position of having to fake a relationship with his own brother.Thatis when he fucks up.
Relationships: Uchiha Itachi/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Five times Sasuke got knocked up by Itachi, and one time he didn't [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536376
Comments: 80
Kudos: 251





	1. derailed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KiaraNxiar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiaraNxiar/gifts).



> I love this fic perhaps an unhealthy amount. I hope you do too. 
> 
> (And yeah, I know I may have gone a LITTLE overboard with all the flourishes. Single-word title? CHECK. Ominous, yet tantalizing (?) summary? CHECK. Sparse yet filthily descriptive tags? CHECK. But it totally deserves it ok! Something as OTT as this _must_ be packaged appropriately!!1!)
> 
> Kiara, I particularly hope you enjoy this ;D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto wouldn’t have found himself in this situation.

bloom3
    

noun, ( _slang_ ) the state of being in heat.

    noun, ( _slang_ ) a drug that heightens sexual sensitivity in most roles, often to the point of inducing premature heat. 

.  
.  
.  


* * *

### the problem

_(Now.)_

Sasuke didn’t like having a cunt. He knew the right things to do with one, knew how to suppress or increase his arousal with careful pulses of chakra, but his cock had always felt far more responsive to that sort of thing.

Maybe it was just because he’d grown up with a cock. Maybe it was because he was just more used to the sensations of arousal with one.

Naruto—who was, and would always continue to be better at the _Oiroke_ than Sasuke, damn him—liked to complain about how sensitive breasts were, or about how giving yourself too plump of an ass or overly curvy thighs could be _so_ distracting, but Naruto never found himself blacking out from orgasms when he hadn’t meant to. Naruto didn’t need to keep himself only just wet enough that being thrust into was alright, rather than mesmerizing.

Naruto wouldn’t have found himself in this situation. Or, if he had, Naruto wouldn’t have been biting his lip, on the edge of tears, struggling to hold in mortifying squeals.

“Ssh,” Itachi said, above Sasuke, his eyes narrow, his brow furrowed with concern. _Am I hurting you?_ his focused gaze said, and Sasuke didn’t know what to do. “What, you want everyone to hear you?”

There was something tortuously good about the mismatch between that low, rough, insinuating tone and the frown Sasuke could see on his brother’s meticulously altered face. _Is he enjoying this?_ Sasuke couldn’t help but think. _He’s so hard. He was hard from the very start._ Which, given chakra and training, didn’t mean anything, but his cunt wasn’t interested in any of that, his cunt just wanted—“ _Ah!_ ”

“So you _do_ want everyone to hear you.” Itachi’s hand pressed harder against Sasuke’s chest, the heel of his hand digging into the shifting upper slope of his plump left breast. “Whore.”

Sasuke had to look away, then. He was going to come, going to tighten down around his brother’s meaty cock so hard that there was no way Itachi wouldn’t feel it, no way Itachi wouldn’t recognize the degree of pleasure he was getting out of this—this farce. “No,” he heard himself crying out, helplessly. “I don’t—nhg— _no_ —”

Crying out like that only made him feel it more, feel himself flinching as his body arched up beneath Itachi’s, squeezing down tight on the cock that was still pounding into him. Each thrust emphasized what was happening, sending wave after wave of filthy pleasure through Sasuke’s increasingly limp body.

He’d been trying not to cling, before. But now…

“You still want it?”

Now, when Itachi pulled back from him, Sasuke felt his legs tighten instinctively around his brother’s waist.

“I knew it,” Itachi said, his smug tone a complete contrast to the resignation in his dark, steady gaze. “Don’t worry,” he added, leaning back in, his now reassuring tone a match for the soothing cast to his gaze, and the way he smoothed a hand along the line of Sasuke’s bare right shoulder. “You’ll get it.”

* * *

### the setup

_(Seven days earlier.)_

“I still don’t know why the—why on earth I was recommended for this,” Sasuke grumbled, only just remembering in time to omit the habitual swearword. Ill-qualified as he was for the mission, he did have his protocol down, and he wasn’t going to start off their first day not tree-running at top speed on getting disappointed looks from Yamanaka Rui, the calm, yet sharp-tongued delegation lead. “Niisan’s the only one anyone’s going to ogle when we’re there anyway; I don’t see why dragging me into things was at all necessary.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sakura said, her voice so bright that he knew, just _knew_ the next thing out of her mouth wouldn’t be to his liking. “He has to sleep sometime, you know, and those old rocks need something nice to look at while they’re refusing to come to terms.”

“Sakura,” Koga-san said, his tone dry, and of course the brief, abashed look she sent in his direction was enough to keep her from being lectured. Internally, Sasuke rolled his eyes; externally, he gave her a bland, unimpressed look and moved up in the caravan column, coming up beside Itachi’s litter half out of extreme boredom and half because he was hoping niisan would have something to say about that brief back-and-forth.

Not something encouraging, of course; Sasuke wasn’t quite that lacking in self-confidence. And anyway that sort of thing had already been dinned in his ears until he was pink in the face back home.

(Mother had been so disgustingly proud that Sasuke’s first S-rank mission would be diplomatic. Sasuke, half worried he’d end up snarling at the wrong person or seducing some idiot noble’s idiot offspring by smiling politely in their vague direction, had just sat there and let Mother’s joyful gushing and Father’s stern, but equally self-satisfied warnings wash over him for half an hour.)

“Tired already, otouto?” was all Itachi said, now, bringing Sasuke out of his brief, unprofessional daze. “Join me up here?”

Miffed, Sasuke dropped back to his previous position two carts behind the gold-encrusted litter, annoyed that he’d set himself up for such an obvious stamina joke so easily. As he retreated, he couldn’t see much of his brother’s tall, lazily reclining form behind the weight of the layers of filmy deep blue curtains, but he knew that Itachi was smirking at him. Gently, as if that could ever dull the edge of his crude, unscrupulous wit.

“Back so soon?” Sakura said, raising her pink, carefully groomed eyebrows at him in dramatic shock.

“Shut up,” Sasuke muttered, hating, as always, the way he sometimes fell into these things, these times when his own bull-headedness boxed him into a spot so people like Uzumaki Sakura could waggle her eyebrows at him like some cheap drama villain. “It’s so fu—it’s too hot to be moving this slowly.”

“Want me to cool you down?” was the sly response, even as she slowed a touch beside him, her fingers wriggling ominously. “I know a few water jutsu that would be just—”

“Sakura-kun, Sasuke-kun, do try to remember that we are in patrol range of Iwagakure.” Sasuke would never understand quite how Yamanaka Rui’s voice could be so warm, friendly, and earnest even as it sent chills down his back. “Please make more effort to comport yourselves with the dignity befitting that of proud ninja of the Leaf.”

“Apologies, Rui-san,” Sasuke said, not at all surprised to hear Sakura’s voice saying just the same thing exactly in time with him. “It won’t happen again.”

Sakura, on the other hand, was much more formal: “This lowly one forgot her station,” she said, just a beat after Sasuke had stopped speaking, her tone perfectly sincere. As if Sakura would ever truly contemplate bowing her head a inch to anyone whose forefathers didn’t hail from Uzu at least as far back as hers did.

(Naruto had been right, that one time he’d grumbled that Sasuke had something against Uzu-affiliated ninja; Naruto’s bullshit theory about how Sasuke hated Uzu ninja because he was jealous that _his_ clan didn’t have as storied or respected a lineage was another story.)

* * *

_(Now.)_

“I’m going to come.” Just hearing those words was enough of an experience that Sasuke couldn’t keep back a shiver. After his second, equally humiliating orgasm, Itachi had bent in so close over him that their chests were pressed together, all while spreading Sasuke’s trembling thighs obscenely wide. “Do you want it?”

Sasuke bit his tongue, hard, to keep from betraying himself even more. He felt like every inch of him was on fire. Itachi’s panting breaths were all he could focus on, that and the rough, merciless motion of Itachi’s cock slamming into his cunt. “Don’t—”

Itachi chuckled. Sasuke’s heart seized at how strained that low, rough sound was. _He won’t—he isn’t really going to—_

The next few thrusts were hard and deep. _I can’t stop him,_ Sasuke thought, with a sick thrill. _If he does it, if he can’t control himself…_

Itachi was grunting on each stroke, nearly loud enough to drown out the meaty smack of his balls against Sasuke’s clenching ass. The comforting squeezes he’d been giving Sasuke had long since turned into a bruisingly tight grip on Sasuke’s shoulders. “Get ready,” he rasped. “Get ready to take it.”

Sasuke nearly couldn’t breathe. _It’ll be my fault,_ he thought, gasping. _I can’t let him—_

But then, just as Itachi’s cock started twitching deep within, Sasuke felt him jerk all the way out. It ached. A splash of come hit Sasuke’s chin, then the underside of his breasts, warm and filthy.

The smell hit next, making Sasuke moan. Or perhaps it was the sudden intrusion of three of Itachi’s fingers right into his cunt, stirring up his aching emptiness with a rough, twisting motion that had Sasuke coming again before he really knew what was happening.

“Did you like it?” Itachi’s voice was slightly hoarse. Triumphant. “Tell me.”

Itachi was still—Itachi’s fingers were still—Sasuke arched again, his mouth open on a soundless cry. He felt like he was going to die, but all he did was arch up, trembling, clenching down on the fingers screwing into him.

It wasn’t until he could catch his breath again that he realized the hand that had been gripping his shoulder up till then was now loose. Tapping on his sweaty skin. _Enough?_

Itachi’s lazy voice echoed that question. “Again?”

“I…” Sasuke’s fingers wouldn’t move.

“Be honest.” Itachi’s teasing tone held a comforting edge, one that was echoed by the naked concern in his gaze as he pulled back a bit. “Hm?”

 _This is where to end it,_ Sasuke thought. _Do it._ But he still found himself slowly shaking his head. “I,” he said thinly, hating himself, “I need…”

* * *

_(Six days earlier.)_

Sasuke’s punishment for the minor breach in pre-mission protocol was taking the midnight to four AM block of watch on that same night it had occurred. Sakura’s was to put up and take down the camp seals on her own.

The next day, Sasuke woke up slightly puffy-eyed, and had to use chakra to keep himself awake as they approached the port due to the disruption in his sleep cycle, which he’d spent days adjusting so that his assigned early-evening watch wouldn’t compromise his alertness. Sakura, meanwhile, had pursed her mouth as she sped through seals the night before, but was her usual unruffled, swaggering self afterwards. This morning, she finished five minutes faster, then turned to Koga-san with bright, praise-seeking eyes.

Koga-san, who had watched her narrowly as she worked with the camp security seals both times, gave her a short series of pointers about her inking technique that had her quiet and respectful and nodding, as if they were talking through a completed assignment rather than a punishment. All in all, it was a perfect illustration of just how Uzu ninja never had to do any real fucking work when push came to shove—the actual reason Sasuke was never going to give any one of them the benefit of the doubt until he’d seen with his own eyes just how competent they actually were.

That Sakura _was_ competent was something he knew quite well, yet chose to ignore all day in order to properly indulge in a well-deserved, blank-faced sulk. As always, by the time they were waiting in line outside the port city’s tall, blocky walls that afternoon, Sasuke had forgiven her already, at least enough to sign inane comments back and forth with her about what he was hoping would be for dinner.

Dinner was late, pushed back by welcoming speech after welcoming speech, greetings and earnest hopes for easy communication and swift resolution piling up one after the other. Nearly everyone loosely gathered beneath the high, chill ceiling of the meeting hall took polite breaks to scarf down tasteless ration bars and gulp mouthfuls of water, because using chakra to stave off hunger and thirst during a diplomatic ceremony was an unwritten faux-pas of the highest order.

By the time the Konoha delegation were finally shut away in their rooms, Naruto was on the verge of implosion, his roiling signature a bright, unpleasant blot within the room’s artfully constructed calming circle. “I’m so _hungry_ ,” he said, almost as soon as the double doors swung shut behind them. “No, Kaka-nii, I swear, if I have to choke down one more f—gods-cursed ration bar—”

“Sweet?” Sasuke said. When Naruto’s wild blue gaze snapped to him, he fished out and tossed over the jerky pack he’d been saving for just this circumstance. He ignored the way that his swift throw, and Naruto’s almost wild snatch at the pack, made Umeda-san’s chakra flinch in conditioned response; the man wouldn’t be much help as so-called security if he couldn’t handle a relaxation in protocol while they were technically in their own territory. “For fu—is biting it open really necessary?”

Naruto, hunched over the hank of sweet and sour jerky he was tearing into, didn’t dignify that with an answer. No one said anything about his current, less than erudite appearance, about the way his lavish green kimono and sleek blond hair only made his sloppy, bare-handed eating and unnaturally shining eyes look more savage. He’d only just come out of heat a day before they set out; some irregular behaviour wasn’t surprising. And he hadn’t complained once about being forced to sit in a litter for almost half of the journey, something Sasuke knew had to have been nigh on torture for the restless blond.

“Any preferences for tonight’s menu?” Koga-san said, the words spoken to Naruto’s hunched back even as Koga-san’s incisive, watery grey gaze slanted in Sakura’s direction. “I was thinking a quick rice porridge…?”

“That will suit, thank you,” Rui-san said, her warm voice robbing Sakura of the chance to comment. “I think anything elaborate will have to wait until we’re settled in.”

Sakura, frowning, began to trudge over to the northwest quadrant of the room, the usual portion of camp that she, Koga-san and the ever-silent Nara Shinobu tended to claim, only to stumble to a halt when Rui-san shifted into her path. “Rui-san…”

“Aren’t you forgetting something, my dear?” Gods, Sasuke knew he shouldn’t be enjoying this, but he couldn’t help but orient himself just a little bit in that direction, savouring the way Sakura’s brow wrinkled. “The seals?”

Sakura’s mouth dropped open. _But that,_ Sasuke could almost hear her thinking, _you **said** I’d only be responsible for them once! Did I imagine that?_

She hadn’t, of course. But she also hadn’t been doing anything to correct Koga-san’s instinctive deference to her all the way during the journey here, and while Rui-san had not bothered to draw a line in the sand regarding that before, now that they were here in Noheji and on diplomatic soil, certain things were going to be hammered home.

“Wasn’t Koga-san saying you needed practice with complex finials just this morning?” Rui-san smiled. “Oh, you young people are so desperately shy about this. My dear, when it comes to the pursuit of higher skill, every chance for practice must be seized. No one here will critique you for that, you know.”

“I,” Sakura said, “then, then, Yamanaka-san—”

“Rui-san, my dear. In future, don’t feel you even need to ask; just set about the thing, and Hatake-kun will know to leave you to it.”

And with that, and a brief, meaningful smile from Rui-san, Sakura had been condemned to beg to be allowed to set up and tear down the camp security seals every night and every morning that they would be trapped in listening range of anyone with a stake in these negotiations. Admirably, Sakura managed to return Rui-san’s smile with a serviceable not-quite-grimace of her own, and she did unseal her brush and ink set promptly.

Of course, that little triumph could not last unsullied. “Sasuke?” Itachi said, as he lowered himself into seiza atop his neatly unrolled bedroll. “You’re not too tired from the switch in watch schedules, are you?”

“I’ll cope,” Sasuke said, shrugging, wishing that Sakura being put in her place didn’t also require that his temporary punishment be unfairly extended as well. But he knew better than to let so much as a twitch of his irritation show on his face, especially when Rui-san was being so kind as to let Itachi issue his marching orders to preserve the clan’s face somewhat. “Do you need anything?”

“Porridge,” Naruto said, loudly, his voice not quite a snarl. “That won’t take long, will it?”

“No, Uzumaki-kun,” Rui-san said, a genuine note of warmth in the way she walked over and put a steadying hand on his back. “It’ll be ready before you know it.”

Jealous, Sasuke tried to content himself with the thought that that was just how people of her generation were around omegas, especially when said omegas were high-born and very clearly suffering from the after-effects of a rushed heat. Still, he couldn’t imagine Rui-san being anywhere near that soft with him in the same situation.

Then again, if Sasuke had been unlucky enough to have gone into heat mere days before the mission started, he would have been summarily replaced with some other promising young omega, and Mother would have gnashed her teeth and grumbled about his awful luck for at least the next two months, all while he nodded and murmured encouragingly and felt a tired sort of relief beneath that. Being on the spot like this in a situation where raw violence or even just simple intimidation wouldn’t ease his way felt profoundly uncomfortable, but ironically, the way for Sasuke to be readily entrusted with S-rank retrieval, sabotage and assassination missions was to ace the tamer, but more politically thorny missions like this one.

 _It’s two more weeks,_ Sasuke told himself. _Two more weeks of best behaviour, and then the trip back. I can do it._

* * *

When things fell apart, it wasn’t because of anything Sasuke had done or not done. One moment, he was yawning as he stood watch across from Itachi’s stall in the men’s bathroom; in the next, he was struggling to keep someone from trying to both strangle him and crush a drug-soaked cloth across his nose and mouth.

For the next few minutes, all was simple violence. The person who’d come after him was a moron. Omegas were known for being able to hold their breath for longer than any other role, so Sasuke only wasted an instant on shock that such a well-known strength would be useful in this kind of situation. He held his breath. He whimpered, clawing weakly at the hard hand obscuring half his face, even as he struggled, backing the two of them towards the sinks. Then, as the soft-chested maybe-a-woman behind him began to pant in more than just exertion, Sasuke drove back with his full strength, taking deep satisfaction in the dull crack of the body of his would-be captor impacting the ornamental stone of the sinks.

Then and only then did Sasuke wrench out of the weakened grip of his would-be captor, then spin around and stun her—definitely a her—with a quick jab of lightning chakra. Dull thumps and scuffles from the direction of Itachi’s stall had Sasuke smashing open the stall next door and vaulting up over the dividing wall to lend a brutal, mostly unneeded hand.

Itachi, frowning, had already downed one of his attackers, and the other was desperately trying to drive him off far enough that they could make their escape. When Sasuke dropped in between them, his teeth bared, the masked, wild-eyed man froze for a moment, and then actually pulled a kunai.

One swiftly broken arm and another jab of lightning chakra later, Sasuke was picking his way past the prone forms of their enemies, his eyes active, frustration keeping his hackles up. “This doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he couldn’t help but say. “I’m your honour guard. It should have been the two of them on me.”

“Wait,” Itachi said, going eerily still. “I think—”

That was when the explosions set in, cracking the air around them with a series of dull, bone-rattling roars. The last one happened close enough that the bathroom jolted unpleasantly around them, deep cracks forming in the pale stone walls, the smooth pink marble trim crackling and spitting shards against Sasuke’s skin.

He only realized he was clinging on to Itachi’s arm and side with a death grip when he felt his brother’s warm breath on the outside of his ear, telling him to _focus_. Shaking himself, Sasuke let go.

 _Unprofessional,_ he scolded himself. _Fresh jonin or not, you’re still his guard. Do your fucking job._

He was ashamed to be glad that Itachi didn’t contest with him over who would take point. That Itachi followed client protocol, keeping a step and a half behind Sasuke, waiting for him to clear each dusty intersection of the maze-like corridors before moving forward as well. Splashes of blood speckled the walls. Every extra step they took without seeing anyone wound Sasuke tighter and tighter.

“…as many as eight hats,” Itachi was murmuring, into the silver bangle on his wrist. “No greetings followed. Three sleepers collected. ETA uncertain.” The code he was using made for a mildly confusing listen, or would have done if his voice weren’t so smooth, so calm, so certain. Every word he said seemed to have meaning. Weight. “We’ll try.”

 _Not good,_ Sasuke couldn’t help but think, on hearing that last phrase. Or, more precisely, hearing the brief, meaningful pause that had come before it. “What’s the plan?”

“Evacuation,” Itachi said, repressively. Then, in the next moment, Sasuke pretended to stumble, and Itachi growled under his breath as he hurried to steady him by hold of his arm and his waist.

 _Document room,_ Itachi tapped, his fingers slightly slick against the bare skin of Sasuke’s lower arm. _Search, then evac._ The document room in question was the most likely location to have copies of the fledgling accord that had been in contention this mission. That the Konoha delegation had their own notes relating to the treaty talk’s progress didn’t lessen the value of being able to look at someone else’s.

 _Suicide,_ Sasuke wanted to grumble under his breath, or perhaps sign back. He knew it was an exaggeration born of jumpiness due to the inexplicable attacks and distant explosions, so he didn’t. _Message received,_ he tapped back, trying not to think about how intimate it felt for Itachi to still have an arm curled around his waist.

Then they had separated again, and were moving, loping silently through the deserted corridors towards their destination. When they neared the turn that would take them into the warren of small, windowless diplomatic offices that adjourned the grand meeting hall, the sounds of scuffling blighted their ears.

Pausing momentarily, Sasuke reactivated his eyes. He wound a pair of clean, unsealed bandages around his slightly aching hands. _Point?_ he signed, indicating himself as he faced Itachi. Itachi’s curt nod drove him forward.

Ten minutes later, Sasuke was retreating in a hurry, doing his best not to breathe even as he hauled Itachi after him with a will. There was nothing more jarring than sneaking into a room expecting an ambush or a fight, only to see and smell the frantic, sordid action of a group of heat-bombed alphas and betas. Snarls broke the sudden silence his swift retreat had left behind, followed by a long, frighteningly eager howl.

Itachi didn’t say another word about trying to get to the document room. The bracelet’s communication seals were still active, rapt silence all that could be heard from the other end. It took ten more minutes of whiplash-inducing turns and flat-out running whenever they encountered yet more heat-bombed aggressors before Sasuke had a spare breath to gasp out, “Hard bloom. Multiple deliveries.” He was so stressed that he was horribly sure he’d fucked up the code; he’d begun filtering his air intake after that first group, but the worry that he hadn’t done it soon enough to matter kept his hands shaking. “What next?”

 _“Immediate evac to point one,”_ was Kakashi’s flat, toneless response, his tinny voice echoing in the cloistered silence of the maintenance room they’d ended up in. Sasuke hoped it was Kakashi, at least; in the event of disaster, ANBU Hound was the designated leader of the group. If anything had happened to him, if anything had happened to Sasuke’s former, merciless, infinitely infuriating sensei— _“Evac. Point one. Do you read?”_

“Yes,” Sasuke rasped back. That _was_ Sensei; Sensei was the only one who dragged out his words like that when he thought you weren’t listening, or thought you were being stubbornly slow to reply out of reluctance to obey. “Message acknowledged. Signing off.”

Or so he said; Itachi was the one reaching up to pulse chakra into the activation seal of the bracelet. Once that was done, Itachi lowered his wrist from the slightly awkward position he’d been keeping it so that both he and Sasuke would be able to hear and respond.

“This fucking mission,” Sasuke muttered. “I told you my team is cursed.”

“Flattered as I am that you seem to think I have any say in the assignment of S-ranks, otouto,” Itachi said, “for the fiftieth time, I really only put in a recommendation. That Hokage-sama saw fit to listen to it is entirely due to your effort.” Then, as Sasuke rolled his eyes, Itachi added: “And, of course, your luck.”

For what was definitely more than the fiftieth time, Sasuke genuinely wished that his brother was a little more like Naruto or even Sakura, i.e. the kind of person that saw annoyed shoves and vengeful shoulder slaps as something to laugh over and return with interest. But Sasuke’s twenty-two years of experience in dealing with Itachi had him resigned to only responding to that open jibe with a sneer; anything more physical than that was guaranteed to come back on him in a painfully humiliating way a month or so later, well after he’d forgot trying to shove his older brother off a path out of pique.

Itachi never forgot an unwanted touch. Anyone that had dealings with him quickly learned to keep their distance. That that wasn’t the only reason Sasuke had always felt on tenterhooks around his brother only meant that this next portion of their escape from the diplomatic complex was something to be dreaded; the least watched exit of the place was, typically, the small, winding maintenance route that serviced the giant lamps that peppered the main building’s cavernous exterior.

“After you,” Itachi said, having already tied back his hair and shed his voluminous outer kimono. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Sasuke, mildly comforted by the fact that he was once again being offered point, muscled open the maintenance door and ghosted in.


	2. trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s just until we get on the ferry, and maybe a few hours after that. I can hold out._

### the escape

_(Four hours earlier.)_

Outside—and didn’t _that_ take a whole lot of sub-vocal cursing and backtracking and debating over which passage they’d squeezed through most recently—Sasuke found that things were both better and worse than expected.

Better, because the chaos that had taken over the diplomatic complex had been more or less contained to just the complex and the one or two blocks within the hastily formed cordon around it. Worse, because said cordon existed, and consisted largely of outraged Kumo nin arguing that just keeping back the tide of marauding, heat-crazed diplomatic ninja and office staff wasn’t going to be enough.

“They kidnapped the heir!” “Gods only know what those barbarians are doing to him—” “—it’ll be war! He’s betrothed to the daimyo’s sister! Her _sister_!” “Senseless Iwa dogs, too greedy for their own—”

_None of our three were Iwa,_ Itachi signed, his fingers the only thing moving in the increasingly long shadow cast by the tall, hulking carriage they were concealed behind. _Doesn’t make sense._

_Agreed,_ Sasuke signed back. The Kumo nin’s frustration was real, but the cause? Heat bombs and kidnappings only went together in shitty action movies; if you had the ability to successfully surprise your enemies by setting off a mist bomb in their midst, you went for poison or sleeping gas as the payload, not Bloom.

Also, if anyone had truly been kidnapped, washing over the crime scene like a bloody tide was about the most counterproductive action possible. What you wanted was to limit access to the scene, question witnesses, and have eyes combing every exit route for clues.

_Time to evac?_ Sasuke signed, and tried not to feel too relieved at Itachi’s slight, reluctant nod. Much as he knew that any extra information gathered at this point would help shed light on what had actually happened, being so close to so many loud, aggressive foreign ninja was keeping Sasuke on edge.

* * *

Two streets away from the over-loud Kumo nin, they were spotted by one of their roving teams.

Running was a bad choice; staying would have been even worse. The gleam in the team lead’s eyes when she recognized the two of them, the over-dramatic way she’d called out Itachi’s name, the fact that every single member of her team had surged in their direction with lightning-wrapped fists…

As they ran, Sasuke could barely focus. He was a bruiser born, omega or no. Running away from people snarling his name and mocking him and his brother for being born to a clan full of demon-eyed sneaks was precisely the opposite of what he was used to doing. He, Naruto and Sakura had never lost a duel back when they were genin for precisely that reason, because when push came to shove, they _shoved_.

Thankfully, in current conditions, it wouldn’t be too hard for them to shake pursuit. It was just late enough that the night market was in full sway, which meant the streets were packed not just with stray, panicking diplomatic personnel and curious onlookers, but with people headed to and from the market and all the various nighttime businesses near it. Which slowed their escape somewhat, but also meant their pursuers were slowed as well, and easily confused into diverting off their trail.

“Just a little longer,” Itachi murmured, his voice barely audible over the increasing clamour of the late-night crowd in the marketplace, none of whom had been all that accommodating to foreign nin demanding to search them or see ID. “The clones should be starting the distraction just about…”

“Hey! Stop him!”

There was something almost hysterically funny to Sasuke about watching his clone vault onto the roof of the building it had just smashed its way out of with an unnecessarily acrobatic flip. Everything about the movement screamed arrogance, screamed a ‘beat this’ mentality that Sasuke hadn’t succumbed to since he was fourteen years old. “You Kumo nin think you understand lightning, right?” his clone said, its voice rough with contempt. “Show me.”

Sure enough, one of their pursuers, a baby-faced chunin with too little brains to understand the ramifications of opening attack on a diplomatic envoy, lashed out with a surprisingly well-formed lightning whip, only to cry out in shock when it deflected off the previously unseen polarity shield clone Sasuke was currently maintaining.

“What was that, a love tap?” the clone said, sneering. “Pathetic.”

Wincing, Sasuke tried to ignore the fact that Itachi had just let out a long, low whistle of mocking admiration. “What about yours?” he whispered. “Shouldn’t it…”

_Boom._

The crowd stirred around them, people on the far end of the market street scattering away from the empty, run-down stall that had just imploded. Itachi’s clone’s red eyes were the first thing visible in the cloud of dust. Nothing about the way the would-be pursuers charged into action against said clone was at all surprising; there was a blazing, purple-red seal pattern blooming to life around the clone’s feet, fed by its slow, menacing hand seals, and the last thing any sensible ninja would do was give an attacker time to complete such an ominous-looking seal formation.

“Man, Noheji nightlife’s got more of an edge than I thought,” Itachi said, loudly, his arm tightening around Sasuke’s waist. “Free light shows and everything.”

“Ninja,” the stall owner to their left said, her tone heavy with disgust. “Nothing good ever comes of letting them have the run of the streets.” Others around her agreed, but not so loudly that it’d be easily audible to the Kumo nin trying to disrupt the barrier preventing them from getting at Itachi’s clone and its bogus seal; anyone that frequented this sometimes lawless portion of the night market knew better than to borrow trouble. “You still want your yakitori, boy?”

“That’ll depend on Sacchan,” Itachi said, tugging Sasuke closer in to himself. “Those classless fucks haven’t taken away your appetite, right?”

Sasuke, flushing horribly, found it all too easy to duck his head and murmur a quiet negative. The casual, proprietary way Itachi’s hand was stroking the bare skin of his shoulder didn’t help; all Sasuke could seem to focus on was the heat of that calloused thumb fiddling with his half-hidden bra strap.

“Your order, Endo-san,” the stall owner said, as her son silently offered them a clutch of loaded skewers. “Might want to hurry up if you’re catching the ferry; the daimyo herself couldn’t get ’em to delay cast-off.”

“Right, right,” Itachi said, bowing carelessly in thanks. “I almost forgot. Come on, you.” Naturally, he had accepted all the skewers; just as naturally, he didn’t see anything wrong in reaching down to squeeze Sasuke’s ass in a bid to get him—her, right now—to hurry up. “The only reason we’re in this shithole’s because you want on that damn ferry.”

“Ikkun, don’t,” Sasuke forced himself to say, in a whisper that was almost as carrying as a shout. “People can see.”

The fact that Sasuke really, really didn’t want to stop his brother fondling his ass was something he was desperately trying to hide; thankfully, his slightly choked, breathy tone of voice made his protest come across as flirtatious. Which was right for the kind of woman he was pretending to be, but was certainly not doing anything for how out of control Sasuke currently felt.

This had been his idea, too. His boneheaded, bull-headed, _stupid_ idea, proposed offhand while he and Itachi had been changing into less identifying clothing in someone’s empty home a street away. _You’ll look way too traditional in that,_ Sasuke had said, on spying the bright green pair of suit trousers Itachi had been pulling on to accompany a flashy gold-trimmed shirt. _That kind of yakuza would never parade a boy around in public._

_It’s Noheji,_ Itachi had said, dismissively. _This is the kind of place men like that bring people they don’t want anyone to know about._ Noheji, for all its importance as the only port town considered to be at a neutral distance from the six major Hidden Villages, was sorely lacking in the kind of infrastructure that would draw in tourists that didn’t feel raptures at the thought of touring the bland bulk of the diplomatic complex or the shabby buildings and industrial warehouses that made up the rest of the non-residential portions of the town.

Still, Sasuke had argued for this. Had felt so much more secure in the thought of playing female arm candy to his brother, so much more safe, that he’d forgot the problem he sometimes had in _Oiroke_. The problem which could interact with his main problem—his feeling, sometimes, a little too drawn to the idea of Itachi’s hands on him—in a way that was decidedly catastrophic.

Itachi, seeing the big-breasted, doe-eyed end result of Sasuke’s transformation, had simply rolled his eyes and gone along with it.

Gods, but Sasuke wished his brother had maintained that uncaring distance. Or that his brother wasn’t such a good actor that this felt real, that the man pawing Sasuke all while grinning and offering him hot chicken skewers didn’t feel just a little bit, more than a little bit… “Mmm,” Sasuke moaned around a mouthful, desperate for revenge. That the yakitori was actually just that delicious only made him more annoyed. “So tasty.”

Sadly, licking his lips and looking meaningfully up at Itachi didn’t produce the slight stiffening in expression that Sasuke would have liked. Itachi just smiled down at him, caressed his waist and offered another skewer, his gaze sly, flirtatious, and perfectly in character.

_I can do this,_ Sasuke told himself, even as he played up the process of taking another bite. _It’s just until we get on the ferry, and maybe a few hours after that. I can hold out._

* * *

Regretfully, the first thing they noticed upon being admitted onto the ‘ferry’, a.k.a. the small, run-down cruise ship that advertised its four-day run across the strait to Port Igusa like it was the eighth wonder of the world, was that the cameras on board were suspiciously up-to-date. Worse, they were well positioned, offering few blind spots and high coverage even within the guests’ rooms.

The few-more-hours act Sasuke had thought he’d committed to had therefore turned into no more and no less than a prolonged, all too necessary violation, one peppered with carefully concealed tap-code messages and assurances.

_Hostile surveillance, ninja-run,_ was the first thing Itachi said to him. _Proceed with stalling action?_

Getting to extraction point one, a semi-abandoned farming complex a mile and a half away from Noheji proper, was going to be tricky enough to do if they started from a dive into the waters off the deck of this ship. If they left the ship now, before it had even set off, they’d be suspicious from the start, and much easier to track.

_Proceed,_ Sasuke said, even though he knew, from the way Itachi was fondling him, the most likely activity that would be chosen for said stalling action.

_Type F acceptable?_ Itachi’s fingers tapped that out in the small of his back, the motion hidden by the way he had Sasuke pressed up against the door of their room. _Please confirm._

_It’ll just be a little,_ Sasuke thought, as he reached behind himself, squeezing Itachi’s wrist in confirmation, then scrabbling for the doorknob. _If I concentrate, he won’t even be able to smell how much I like it._ Then they were in their overpriced little room, and kissing noisily, and a sizeable amount of Sasuke’s brain went offline.

_Thighs,_ Itachi eventually signalled, clumsily, even as he murmured about how he couldn’t wait to put his cock right there, right inside his pretty little slut. _Accept?_

“Do it,” Sasuke whimpered. And then, when Itachi kept on running his calloused hands up and down rather than actually _doing_ , Sasuke found just enough wit to tap back _accept_.

What happened after that wasn’t Itachi’s fault. _Status?_ he kept asking, even as he suckled Sasuke’s aching nipples, even as he squeezed and stroked Sasuke’s bare skin. By the time his cock was between Sasuke’s trembling thighs, Sasuke couldn’t coordinate well enough to respond.

_It’s got to be the Bloom,_ Sasuke kept thinking. It felt different than a normal heat. Slower. It had probably only kicked in this late because he hadn’t inhaled all that much to begin with.

_Status?_

He had to respond. Tightening his thighs around Itachi’s cock felt so good, and it was wrong, so wrong—

_Status?_

Sasuke licked his lips. Itachi was frowning down at him in between those slow, tortuous thrusts. _It’s affecting you anyway,_ something in him hissed. _He already thinks something is wrong. Why not just… take advantage?_

“I need it,” Sasuke finally choked out. “I need it inside. _Inside_. Please.” Then, seeing his brother’s deepening frown, he reached out with a shaking, traitorous hand, tapping on the inside of the arm Itachi was braced above him with. _Heat. Please confirm._

Itachi’s expression tightened, but that didn’t stop him from pulling Sasuke’s thighs apart and rubbing the hot, slick head of his cock against Sasuke’s aching entrance. He thrust in slowly, letting out a low, snarling groan that was completely at odds with the concern in his dark gaze.

_Even like this,_ Sasuke thought, _it’s worth it._

* * *

### the problem, still ongoing

_(Now.)_

The third time Itachi fucked him was worse. _Better._ Itachi came inside him, most likely by accident. Sasuke, dazed from the pounding he’d just gotten on all fours, could only react with a shocked, guilty moan.

_If he ever finds out how I lied…_

But it was too late for those thoughts, too late to do anything but rock back and accept Itachi’s increasingly hard thrusts, Itachi’s slowly swelling knot. At least Itachi wouldn’t have to feel guilty about fucking him like this; they both knew very well how indiscriminate omega pheromones could make someone. Unintentional, accidental incest was a serious problem, the kind of thing uncivilised people could only manage to stave off with strict role-based segregation and taboos against opposite-role social interaction.

Modern society had gradually done away with those restrictions, trusting people to exert self-control and take sensible precautions against exactly this kind of thing. And yet…

“Ikkun’s is so good,” Sasuke heard himself slurring. “It’s so big. I’ll be torn open. So good.”

“Ssh,” Itachi said, his tone unsteady, his rough, panting breaths hot against the side of Sasuke’s neck. “You and your dirty mouth.”

* * *

The fourth time, Sasuke thought it wasn’t going to happen at first. Itachi had just pulled out of him, leaving his slick, gaping cunt bare to the view of whatever cameras were trained on them.

Sasuke only barely registered what was happening. The thought that whoever was manning the security station on the ship would see him like this stung, but it was a sweet hurt, one he welcomed. _I deserve it,_ he thought. _That I did this—that I’ve been **making** niisan do this—_

“Making that face like you’ll die, you still want it, right?” Itachi’s tone as he said that was somewhere between proud and reassuring. His touch made Sasuke shiver, the initial, casual slide of his hand up and down Sasuke’s trembling stomach turning into a sudden, satisfying intrusion down below. His fingers dipped into Sasuke’s cunt, three of them, then four, entering so easily that Sasuke moaned. “Bear with it, okay? I won’t be away for long.”

“What? Where are you… mmph…” Even as Itachi plundered his mouth, his free hand was tapping gently against Sasuke’s stomach. _Security room,_ he said. _Evac preparation._

“Give me your hand.” Itachi’s fingers withdrew, moving up to take hold of Sasuke’s trembling left hand and guide it down between his widely spread thighs. “That’s right. Plug yourself up like this and wait for me, okay?”

“O-okay.” It was everything Sasuke could do not to cry. It was one thing if this kind of thing was happening because he’d been unlucky enough to go fully into heat partway through a mission; it was quite another to receive this kind of thoughtful, meticulous care from his brother when the delay in their escape had been entirely due to his selfishness. “Don’t make me wait too long, Ikkun.” The least Sasuke could do was keep up his cover. “It hurts.”

“Bear with it, alright? I’ll be quick.” Itachi bent in to press a quick, casual kiss to Sasuke’s cheek before he finally straightened and got off the bed. Every action he took was in character, from the lazy way he tucked away and re-zipped himself to the seemingly idle glance he cast around the room as he did so. His gaze didn’t linger when it landed on Sasuke’s spread-legged, naked form; he’d given ‘Sacchan’ an order, after all, and didn’t need to concern himself with her again unless she disobeyed it.

And she wasn’t. Sasuke’s four fingers were plugged deeply into his cunt, only moving when his arm trembled. He was the very picture of a docile, heat-wracked omega, one used to being used, to following simple, demeaning orders even when they hurt.

Just knowing that Itachi could see him like this was the biggest, most frustrating turn-on that Sasuke had ever felt in his life. Watching Itachi amble towards the room’s door was… difficult.

“Ando, get your ass in here.” Somehow, even though Sasuke had been half expecting to hear Itachi say something like this, he couldn’t help but flinch. “Watch her for me, will you?”

“Yes, boss,” was the immediate response from Ando—Itachi’s second, hard-working shadow clone. It had bought their cruise tickets, shadowed them onto the ship, and probably stood looming outside their room while—while Sasuke—“Boss, is she already…?”

“Heat hit her early, I guess. Comfort her a little if she gets too restless, but don’t go overboard.”

“Got it, boss.”

Sasuke couldn’t help but swallow, hearing the deliberately badly hidden eagerness beneath that obedient response. Of course niisan would arrange for his clone to help with this. _Of course._ Just thinking about it made Sasuke wet, and furious with himself, and wet again because he could hear—when had he closed his eyes?—Itachi’s swaggering footsteps signalling his departure.

The door closed. The heavy, deliberate footsteps of ‘Ando’ approached the bed. “No need to get so shook up,” it said. “You heard the boss. I won’t go overboard, not even if you want it.” A large, calloused, unfamiliar hand closed over Sasuke’s right breast, squeezing hard. “Fuck, I’ve missed this. Like a fucking pillow.”

Playing along, Sasuke pointedly turned his head away from the side of the bed ‘Ando’ was reaching for him from, only to be forced to turn back by a tight grip in his hair. “Don’t—”

“You know what I want, Saya-chan. Open your fucking mouth.” The clone was already undoing its gaudy belt buckle, the belt the same one Sasuke had bought as a gag gift for Shisui on his one stroll through the market two days ago. That belt, a spare vest from Itachi, and Sasuke’s overlarge exercise jacket had formed most of the clone’s disguise. “Come on.”

_Show only,_ the clone tapped on the inside of Sasuke’s wrists, but it was Itachi’s massive, half-hard cock poking through that unbuttoned fly, and Sasuke couldn’t help himself. “Mmph. Nngh…”

“Heh.” The clone’s hand was frozen on his cheek, trembling slightly. Just a couple licks and a suck was enough to get it fully hard. “You know, I think you like being bullied into it. ‘No, don’t’… like you don’t fucking want it.” It had affected a high-pitched, mocking voice for its imitation of Sasuke; it, at least, was treating this all as a show, all while… “Fuck. Take it all in.”

Even though that was probably just another fake order, Sasuke couldn’t help but try. He moaned, relaxing his throat, pushing forward against the clone’s weakly restraining hand. Saliva leaked out the sides of his widely stretched mouth, and he swallowed, savouring the weight of his brother’s cock in his mouth.

The clone groaned when he got halfway down. Its hand moved to rest against the back of Sasuke’s head, tacitly encouraging him. It probably thought he needed it. It was right. Or it wasn’t, it was only humouring him, but whatever it thought, Sasuke couldn’t bring himself to care.

He sobbed as he sucked. He got almost all of that massive cock swallowed down before he started to gag, but even that didn’t stop him. The clone was kneeling on the bed by now, its broad, heavy body looming over him, one arm propped up against the wall behind the bed, the other one encouraging Sasuke to take in more.

Sasuke whined in the back of his aching throat. He didn’t know when his fingers had started moving in and out of his slick, spasming cunt, but he couldn’t stop. Breathing was difficult, but so good, so _right_ , each inhale bringing him another dose of niisan’s musk, niisan’s filthy desire for him.

Growling, the clone began to thrust in and out of his mouth. Careful as it was trying to be, it was still too much, nearly choking Sasuke on every other thrust. By the time it finally began to spurt down his throat, Sasuke was well on his way to blackout.

Or rather, he wanted to be, but he wasn’t quite… Fingers weren’t enough. He groaned around the clone’s still-hard cock, hating how weak he sounded. It almost felt as if he really was in full heat, and if he was, wouldn’t that just be a cosmic joke? He’d be mostly functional while he muddled through the first wave, but when the second hit…

“Do you need more?” the clone said, almost tenderly, and Sasuke hummed around its cock in response. “Get your fingers out of there, Sacchan. I’ll help.”

“No,” Sasuke mumbled. The cock blocking his mouth was down between his thighs now, stroking wetly over the sensitive lips of his empty cunt. His hands were pinned down above his head. Something felt off with the situation, but he couldn’t tell what. “Niisan said not to.”

“It’s okay. He’ll understand.”

“But…”

“Ssh. Take it.” Niisan’s cock felt just as good as it had the first time, that thick, slick head rubbing against him first, then smoothly entering. It was even easier now that Sasuke’s cunt was dripping with a mix of his own juices and all the come that hadn’t leaked out of him yet. “Ah… just like that.”

“Nn…”

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” the clone said, its voice slightly breathless. “Primary would want me to take care of you. Relax.”

“The…” Now, Sasuke knew what was wrong. He struggled to open his eyes, first checking that ‘Ando’ was the one above him. “The room,” he forced himself to say. The cock filling him up wasn’t really moving yet, but he still felt too scrambled to manage tap code. “The room isn’t safe. Y-you can’t…”

“By now,” the clone said, “Primary will have taken control of the monitoring system.” The clone moved a hand up from its former grip on his left thigh, rubbing a slow, calming circle over Sasuke’s stomach. “All I have to do is take care of you for him.”

“But—ngh!” It was thrusting into him now, hard enough that its balls smacked against his ass with a wet, lewd slap. There was no discernible rhythm to its assault. Sometimes, it paused just long enough for Sasuke to catch his ragged breath before filling him up again. Sometimes, it bent in and hammered in again and again and again, its hands keeping Sasuke pinned and spread and helpless.

It was during one of those latter times when Sasuke heard the room door grating open. He froze, all kinds of disordered thoughts crowding his muddled mind. That the clone hadn’t stopped pounding him could mean the intruder was Itachi, but it could also just as easily mean it was someone the act was necessary for.

Breathless, Sasuke began writhing, half to add to the act, and half to try and wrest a hand free of the iron grip pinning both his arms above his head. That the struggle felt good was just another thing to despise himself for, another thing he didn’t _deserve_ to have his eyes stinging with pathetic tears for—

“Calm down, otouto,” Itachi’s low, hoarse voice said. “I’m back.”

Somehow, Sasuke managed not to break into ugly, betraying sobs. He’d come twice already during the clone’s relentless assault, but just hearing his brother’s voice again was enough to prime him for another orgasm. That niisan wasn’t just going to watch, that when this clone dispersed, he’d _remember_ , he’d _feel_ … A thin, wretched cry tore out of Sasuke’s throat as his cunt clamped down around the thick cock inside him.

Moments later, his body went limp, trembling from the aftershocks of that terrible pleasure. The clone panted harshly above him as it slowly withdrew, its cock still deliciously hard. Sasuke bit his lip to keep from voicing out a useless protest, focusing on trying to get himself back under control with chakra.

He was so single-minded, so rapt in that difficult process, that he barely noticed Itachi’s clone getting off the bed. Its dismissal was the first thing that successfully snagged his attention; the sight of Itachi stepping up to the side of the bed, already unzipped, shattered Sasuke’s concentration for good. “What are you…?”

“Aren’t you still in heat?” Itachi had no expression as he said that, his gaze fixed on Sasuke’s flushed face. Watching. Judging. “Don’t you need to be fucked properly to get over the first wave?”

“I-I thought, since you went after the cameras, we’d have to move immediately,” Sasuke got out. He didn’t want to meet his brother’s gaze, but he didn’t know where else to look that wasn’t either dangerously tempting or a place that’d come off as too avoidant. Itachi had already stepped out of his trousers and boxers, and was starting to shrug off his brightly coloured suit jacket, and the only thing more obvious than staring at his body would be staring at the room around them to keep from doing so. “I mean, given that we need to evac—”

“That’s not an issue,” Itachi said. The shirt was coming off now, and Sasuke couldn’t quite make himself look away. “I called it in; Hound knows to expect us in Taiki in a day or two. Still want it as a woman?”

“Niisan, there’s no _need_ ,” Sasuke hurried to say. He was better focused now, just enough that he could edge over in bed, retreating as Itachi sat down. “I can run just fine like this, okay? I’m not, I’m not crystal clear, but I can—don’t! There’s no need to—”

“Isn’t there?” Itachi’s low, deceptively smooth tone was a shocking contrast to his bruising grip on Sasuke’s upper arm. “Tell me, otouto. Are you, or are you not currently in heat?”

_He knows,_ Sasuke thought, the bottom dropping out from his stomach. _He knows I lied._ Why else would he ask? _He knows._ Why else would he get into bed naked like this without just charging on and fulfilling a decent person’s duty to a suffering omega? _He knows._ The only place Itachi was touching him was his arm. _He **knows**._ “I’m sorry.”

Itachi’s grip tightened. “That’s not an answer.”

“Niisan, I know how… how inexcusable…” Sasuke gulped. “I fucked up, I know, but please. I’ll do—I’ll take whatever punishment you want. Just don’t, i-in the report, please just don’t say anything about how I did this on purpose.”

A long, ominous silence was his only answer. Then, just as Sasuke was about to start hyperventilating from fear, the grip around his arm loosened a touch. “You did this on purpose,” Itachi said, tonelessly, “and you want me to lie on my report?”

“I won’t, I, I’m not asking to look good, okay? You can say I, I reacted too slowly back in the—the complex. Breathed in too much, got dosed due to negligence.” Mother and Father would be so disappointed in him, but it would be better than how they’d feel if the sordid truth was revealed. “I’ll even ask to be put on leave.”

“What did you say about punishment?” Itachi’s voice was frighteningly smooth now, his tone a jarring mix of angry and upbeat. “It can be whatever I want?”

“Yeah.” Sasuke felt light-headed with fear, but he still managed to answer. “That’s right.” He forced himself not to flinch when Itachi’s hand loosened from around his arm, and began to stroke over his shoulder. “But, considering the m-mission, I think that, that waiting till we get back—”

“What if I don’t want to wait?” There was a barely repressed growl in Itachi’s voice. “What if I want to do it right now?”

_He’s angry,_ Sasuke told himself. _So, so maybe I’ll have to take a couple hits, before—_ “Agh!”

Even as he cried out in shock, he felt everything. He felt the familiar, calloused heat of Itachi’s hand cupping his right breast, squeezing it gently, teasing his stiff nipple with a harsh twist. The brief spike of pain from that was nothing compared to the fierce ache of Itachi’s teeth digging into the side of his neck.

All that time, Itachi’s other arm was clamped around his waist. Sasuke heard himself breathing raggedly, whimpering as Itachi’s tongue rasped over the stark bruise he’d left behind. “Can I punish you now?” Itachi squeezed his breast again, hard enough that Sasuke had to bite back a yelp. “Well?”

“That,” Sasuke said, weakly. “Y-yes… ngh!”

Itachi’s low, hoarse chuckle had more than a little bit of a growl in it. “Good answer, otouto. _Very_ good.”


	3. frenzy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You didn’t mind me hearing you earlier.”

### the solution

_(Now.)_

It felt like a dream. A very good, very filthy one, the kind that had tortured Sasuke all through his sixteenth summer, leaving him humping his already sticky sheets with his fingers stuffed in his mouth to keep from saying anything forbidden out loud as he came.

Itachi didn’t do him any such courtesy. Whenever Sasuke tried to press his face into the pillow or cover his mouth with a hand to muffle his embarrassingly loud voice, Itachi wasted no time in tearing away his grip, or hauling his head back by his loose, sweaty hair. “Don’t,” Sasuke sobbed, each time. “Don’t, niisan…”

“Why?” The very first answer. “You don’t want me to hear you?” The second. “You didn’t mind me hearing you earlier.” The fourth. “It’s no use. I already know you’re a slut.” Just now, Itachi’s harsh breaths warm on the back of Sasuke’s neck, a soothing counterpart to his hard thrusts. “Look how wet you are. I bet you can take my knot.”

“I—hgh—I can’t—”

“You can’t what? You can’t take all of my knot?” Itachi let out a breathless, mocking laugh. “Didn’t you take it earlier?”

Earlier, Itachi had been convinced Sasuke was out of control, and had probably been exerting some of his own, limiting the growth of his knot as much as you ever could with chakra. Now, the monstrous weight of it barely fit, stretching the slick, aching entrance of Sasuke’s cunt with each thrust. “It… it’s too…”

“I’ve thought it through, otouto. The only way we sell this—account for a mutual—ngh—inevitable loss of control, is if—ungh—if I get you pregnant.”

Sasuke shuddered. All this time, he’d been forcing himself to hold back, to stay relaxed, to keep from triggering a proper joining, and niisan had been wanting to, _planning_ to fill him up. Just thinking about it made his cunt clench tight, tight enough that it hurt.

Itachi groaned. His body jerked forward, driving down deep into Sasuke, his knot swelling as he did so, sealing the deal. Soon enough, his cock began twitching, spilling thick, hot spurts of his come into Sasuke’s packed cunt.

For the next few moments, all Sasuke could do was take it. He was on his back, his legs spread obscenely wide, his upper body pinned down by Itachi’s weight. Every so often, Itachi would pull back and circle his hips a little, the minute, deliberate shifts in his knot stimulating Sasuke unbearably.

“Just to be sure,” Itachi finally murmured, “I think we should do this again with your real body.”

“That… I don’t think there’s a need for that.”

“What, you prefer it like this?”

“No, I mean, we’re supposed to have lost control, right?” Sasuke was proud of his tone just then, proud of how even he managed to sound. Itachi would never guess the real reason was that he didn’t want to wait the necessary fifteen or twenty minutes it would take for his ass to be ready to take on Itachi’s huge cock. “A heat-crazed alpha wouldn’t ask for me to do another _Oiroke_ , much less wait for me to do it.”

“Ah,” Itachi said, pulling his upper body back just enough that he could look at Sasuke’s flushed, sweaty face. “So the key is in the wait.”

“Exactly,” Sasuke said, before realizing how much that might give him away. “I mean—”

“It’s okay to admit it,” Itachi said, his hand moving to brush aside a sweaty strand of hair from Sasuke’s cheek. “Just say you can’t stand to let go of my cock, not even for a minute.”

Scowling, Sasuke did not dignify that low, mocking statement with a direct response. “Shouldn’t it be easing up already?” he said instead, with a pointed glance down at where they were joined. “You’ve already shot this much, and yet…”

“Milk me a little,” Itachi said, bending in again. “I’m sure that’ll help.”

So the next half hour was just that, Sasuke panting as he slowly, rhythmically tightened and loosened his cunt around his brother’s massive knot. Now and then, Itachi’s hand would move under him to knead at the flexing curve of his arse.

Only when he could feel Itachi’s knot beginning to squelch freely in and out of his sore, stretched entrance did he finally give up, and even then, it wasn’t over. “Just one more try,” Itachi whispered. “One more.”

By then, the sheets beneath them were damp, sticky with their mingled juices. Sasuke’s legs were limp, held up and apart solely by Itachi’s firm grip, and Sasuke could no longer find the energy to do anything other than moan.

“There?” Itachi asked, unsteadily. “It’s good there, isn’t it?” His other hand slid down the inside of Sasuke’s thigh, then pinched his oversensitive clit. When Sasuke began to convulse, that wicked hand moved up, stroking over his tense belly, massaging him there, steadying him for the increasingly rough thrusts he was being forced to take. “You don’t mind this, right?”

“Nhn…”

“Nod for me, otouto. Show me you don’t mind getting pregnant.”

Sasuke somehow managed a brief, weak nod. It was soon followed by broken gasps, by the kind of wordless whines only someone being driven beyond the brink could make. Sasuke didn’t realize it was him making those sounds until Itachi bent in and muffled them with his eager mouth.

That was the first time Sasuke fully blacked out. As he lost consciousness, he couldn’t help but feel a stupid, useless kind of pride; he’d lasted this long without doing so, after all, and in quite a stressful situation, too.

* * *

In the end, Sasuke lost the argument against his changing back into his real body for another round. He knew it was over when Itachi started to finger him open in the back, all while murmuring that it’d be a shame to waste any of the come that would be poured in there regardless.

“Isn’t the whole point of this to get me pregnant?” Sasuke tried to say, anyway, only to be levelled with an amused look.

“The point,” Itachi said, his tone unyielding, “is to punish you.” He raised his eyebrows just a bit. “Don’t tell me you already forgot?”

Scowling, Sasuke ducked his head, pulled together his chakra and worked his way through the change. That Itachi was polite enough to take his fingers out of Sasuke’s asshole didn’t reduce Sasuke’s embarrassment. Sasuke had never changed while quite this aroused, and there was something intensely humiliating about feeling his restored cock swell up and harden so quickly.

“Good,” Itachi murmured, the approval in his low tone sending a shudder through Sasuke. “Very good, otouto.”

That that rare, sought-after praise would be given for something like this—for the feel of his trembling, sticky thighs, and the stiffness of his thin cock—Itachi’s hand felt so hot there, not quite closing around him. Cupping him, tracing the slight curve of the underside of his cock with slick fingers.

When Itachi’s hand finally closed around Sasuke’s cock in a tight, warm, squeeze, he couldn’t keep back a whine. Just that was good, so good, and now Sasuke could feel Itachi’s other hand palming his ass, dipping into his cleft, stroking around his already loosened hole. He didn’t know how the sudden slide of two fingers inside him didn’t make him come.

“Good,” he heard Itachi say again, and then he heard nothing, because those fingers were pressing inside him _there_.

The orgasm pulled him apart. “Don’t,” Sasuke heard himself crying out. “It’s too—hurts—” But Itachi’s fingers were relentless.

He had to know how bad it was, how sensitive a male omega could get, back there. He was—

“ _Don’t_ …”

—massaging it, just slowly enough that Sasuke could feel each tortuous motion, each brush against his tingling prostate. He was going to come again. He was already—

“…ngh! Hnah—anh—”

“…feeling it?” Itachi’s cold, dark tone wavered, his unsteady breaths another tantalizing distraction on Sasuke’s ear. “What you’ve done… you deserve…”

Sasuke tried to speak, tried to phrase a demand for his brother to slow down, only to feel his legs being forced up and apart over Itachi’s shoulders. His ass clenched on its own. He knew what was coming.

“Not,” he slurred, “’s not ready…”

Itachi didn’t listen. His fingers continued fucking Sasuke open, spreading Sasuke’s tender hole, each stroke only just managing to avoid Sasuke’s too-sensitive prostate. His cockhead pressed and slid and somehow went in.

Trembling, Sasuke felt himself going limp. Letting someone in his ass wasn’t something he had very much experience with, especially during heat; it was too risky. Itachi’s slow, measured thrusts felt like they were tearing him open. He didn’t know how he was still hard, until he felt the nearly too tight squeeze of Itachi’s hand stroking up his slick cock.

Then Itachi shifted against him—inside him—and suddenly he was moaning like a whore again, clenching down greedily. It still hurt, but he wanted it, he wanted it rubbing inside him, stroking like that, filling him up.

He came like that, sobbing soundlessly, his hole clamped tight around Itachi’s thick cock. Itachi sped up as a result, forcing more into him, breathing heavily, tightening his grip on Sasuke’s thighs. Soon enough, Sasuke could feel the hot, tight swelling of the top of Itachi’s knot pressing against the rim of his hole.

In any other situation, that feeling would have been cause for Sasuke to clear his throat, to warn his partner off from overstepping. Here and now, though, the only warning Sasuke could manage to shape was a weak, wheezing “niisan, you can’t…”

“You don’t need to worry,” was the cool, almost mocking answer. “It’ll only make our exit more difficult if you end up bleeding because I forced it in.” Itachi’s fingers were playing with him there, though, stroking his already stretched skin. The stimulation felt terrifyingly good, good enough that Sasuke found himself angling forward to meet it, even when he felt one of Itachi’s fingers forcing into his rim, sliding in alongside the cock already filling him. “Help me, otouto. Use your hand.”

In that, Sasuke was very much experienced. Breathing unsteadily, he unslung one arm from its feeble grip on Itachi’s waist, feeling horribly self-conscious as he began to feel around between them. He’d always hated this moment, the surge of _want_ he always felt when his fingers finally brushed more than rumpled clothes or sweaty skin.

The Academy’s health pamphlets had always made it sound so clinical. _Stimulation of the knot is known to boost fertility in all roles,_ they advised. _Manual stimulation of the knot or stimulation via partial or limited penetration of the genitals is not recommended in cases where avoidance of pregnancy is desired._ But everyone did that kind of thing anyway, relying on the combination of condoms and blockers to reduce the risk just enough that no one would walk away burdened afterwards.

Itachi groaned when Sasuke palmed his balls. Just the sound of it, conveyed through the press of Itachi’s chest against the backs of his thighs… _I can’t,_ Sasuke wanted to say. _Touching him there like this, I’ll go crazy…_ But he was already doing it, his trembling fingers slipping against the taut, slick curve of his brother’s knot. Circling it.

Even before Sasuke finally let himself squeeze, he felt a heavy twitch from the cock within him, followed by a surge of warmth. Another groan, his or Itachi’s, and then movement, the both of them writhing against each other.

“Change back,” Itachi growled in his ear, some unknowable time later. “I need… I have to put it all inside you. Change for me, otouto.”

Sasuke didn’t know how he managed it, how he had any chakra control left. He was just a hole now, stretched and sensitive and needy. Maybe it was the draw of having one more hole to fill, or maybe it was the guilt that kept its teeth in him; either way, after he’d heard that request—the first time? The second? Sasuke gritted his teeth and tried to force his body to become that softer, hungrier shape.

This time, Itachi didn’t pull out. “So obedient now,” he whispered, his hand caressing Sasuke’s neck, tracking the shift that way. “Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth, before?”

There was something madly ironic about him asking such a question even as he continued slamming his cock deep into Sasuke’s tender ass. It would almost have been enough to make Sasuke feel sure his brother hadn’t noticed the change, if he couldn’t feel Itachi’s hands on his breasts again, squeezing and massaging them thoroughly.

 _He likes them,_ was Sasuke’s final coherent train of thought, that night. _He likes them this big._

_Maybe, in the future, I can…_

* * *

There was no more changing, after that. Sasuke was simply fucked and fed and groomed and fucked again, hours whirling by in a rush of bruising sensation. The food didn’t taste all that good— _typical shitty cruise fare,_ he found himself thinking hazily, at one time or another—but it was improved by Itachi’s inescapable presence.

He smelled like Sasuke now. Like he’d drenched every inch of himself in the juices of Sasuke’s slutty, aching cunt. He smelled like worry, too, that sharp, almost bitter tinge Sasuke had used to find alarming back when he was young, and thought that anything that could bother his niisan that much must be some sort of calamity.

In this case, Sasuke knew quite well what was worrying Itachi. The waves—the apparent tide of pleasure hollowing out every last bit of Sasuke’s will to do anything other than spread his legs and get fucked—the whole thing was lasting longer than it should. Itachi had fed him three blockers in what felt like two days, and still—

“…need it,” Sasuke was saying, hating himself. He knew Itachi was tired and drained enough that Itachi was finally down to using fingers, but he couldn’t stop. “Just once. One more.”

In response, Itachi sighed, shifting closer, his fingers already starting to stroke in and out of Sasuke’s sopping cunt. “All right,” he murmured. “Once.” But there was a steely undertone to that word, one that hinted at ugly consequences if Sasuke could not pull himself together.

 _He knows,_ Sasuke thought again, despairing. It should have made everything feel that much worse; instead, it made the slow, steady thrust of his brother’s fingers feel searingly good. At least until the end. “No,” he found himself sobbing, as he burned again, as Itachi’s fingers worked him with that wicked, twisting motion they now knew was what worked best. “No…”

Just like that, it was over. Even before the last spasm was over, Sasuke was empty again. He bit the inside of his lip. _I still need your cock,_ he could say. _I don’t think I’m pregnant._ But Itachi’s cool gaze was on him, and he didn’t dare.

“Clean up a little,” was the low, pointed advice, followed by the careful press of a just-dampened wad of cloth into Sasuke’s trembling left hand. “I had a clone map the ship’s security patrols, and none of them are ninja. Still, the less obvious scent we’re carrying, the better.”

Sasuke didn’t remember anything like his brother breaking off to make a shadow clone, any pauses that hadn’t been for repositioning or coaxing him into eating lukewarm soup, but he got to work anyway. By the time he’d wiped off most of the sticky mess between his thighs, Itachi was clean and dressed again, and the pretty blue sundress Sasuke had worn during boarding had been placed neatly within his reach.

The dress smelled faintly of that standard, slightly lemony scent common to cheap hotel laundries. There was a pair of clean panties folded away within the dress, but no bra. “We’re going for a casual stroll,” Itachi said, just as Sasuke had steeled himself to ask about that omission. “With you obviously having been in heat,” and Sasuke really didn’t know how his brother could say that so calmly, like the last day or two hadn’t even happened, “it would make sense if you were too dazed to bother with a bra.”

 _That,_ Sasuke found himself thinking, a half hour later, _or niisan just wants an excuse to grope my braless tits._ He knew, even as he thought that, that the idea was more than a little far-fetched. Itachi wasn’t the type to take those sorts of risks, especially not when a mission had already gone so far off course. He knew the long, sidelong looks and the way the hand on his waist kept inching higher and higher as they strolled through the ship’s noisy corridors were all just part of their cover.

When Itachi finally slid his hand up and over Sasuke’s left breast, Sasuke couldn’t help but flinch. “What—ngh!”

Even as Itachi dragged Sasuke close against him, smirking as he gave Sasuke’s aching nipple several rough, horribly stimulating twists, his fingers were tapping on the inside of one of Sasuke’s arms. _Patrol incoming. Off-duty._

“Stop pretending, Sacchan,” he murmured. “You’ve been looking at me. I’m just giving you what you want, you know that.”

Sasuke closed his eyes. This was too much. They’d already slowed before Itachi started groping him, as if to admire the choppy grey-brown waves that were all that could be seen from the walkway on the starboard deck. There were fewer people up here than there had been in the corridors and the packed buffet room they’d struggled to navigate past. It wasn’t an ideal place to disembark, but a good one to begin preparations for said disembarkment, likely by putting on a show—this show—of being a horny couple on the lookout for somewhere semi-private and deserted enough to fuck.

Itachi was already starting to steer him this way and that, hot hands moulding his arse, rubbing over his breasts, rumpling and wrinkling the cloth of his sundress. Sasuke couldn’t even say no, or so much as try to put on more than a futile struggle; he’d seen the security guard ambling past just a minute ago, or at least caught enough of a glimpse of that woman’s unbuttoned uniform shirt and dull grey slacks over Itachi’s hunched shoulders that it was obvious what she was.

It wasn’t fair. Sasuke was wet again, staining his previously clean panties, and even though it wasn’t really going to matter when he dove into the water in a few minutes, it felt unfair enough that he had a hard time not grinding his teeth.

Soon enough, they were down on the secondary starboard deck, being dampened by spray as Itachi continued his rough fondling with one hand while threading chakra strings towards the nearest security camera with the other. His thigh was shoved right between Sasuke’s, pressing firmly up against the increasingly damp cloth bunched up between Sasuke’s legs.

The string connected with the camera—barely. Then it was five more horrible, panting, _needy_ breaths, Sasuke suffering those hands on his breasts and arse while they waited for the right moment.

The ship passed through a rougher swell. Spray needled their sides; the camera shorted out with a discordant hiss. Already, Itachi’s hands had moved away from Sasuke, leaving him aching with need and furious with himself for it.

They undressed in charged silence. Sasuke knew how strongly he smelled right now, _knew it_ in a way that left a bitter tang in his mouth. All the pheromones and the musk in the world were useless if the one person you wanted to use them to reel in was unaffected.

The moment Sasuke was done pulling gear from the seal on the makeup mirror in his handbag, he passed it over, turned around (pointless, but automatic) and practically dragged on his ninja pants and an adjustable mesh tunic. He put his somewhat greasy long waves back into a tight bun, then bent to snatch up his kitten heels, wad up the dress and wait for Itachi to return the mirror.

Typically, he felt the pointed tap of the mirror’s cool surface against his shoulder before he could even straighten up. Gritting his teeth, Sasuke accepted it. Storing the handbag, shoes and dress only took a moment of thought.

 _I guess I really was in heat,_ he couldn’t help but think, somewhere at the back of his increasingly angry mind. _The rage is kicking in right on schedule._

 _After me,_ Itachi signed, impatiently, already perched on the nearest railing. As soon as Sasuke twitched his fingers in acknowledgement, Itachi leapt off and away.

 _Of course,_ Sasuke thought, seething. _Can’t have the heat-wracked omega take point._ That he knew it was what he deserved due to his selfish choices earlier on only made him more furious.

He didn’t know how he held back the urge to snarl as he leapt. Then the water hit him like a brick, the impact only mildly muted by his last-minute flare of chakra, and all Sasuke’s thoughts were on getting to dry land, speeding over to the meeting point, and heading home.

Bad as it would be for his career, Sasuke couldn’t help but hope he wasn’t currently pregnant, and therefore having exhibited sufficient proof that his dereliction of duty was brought about by circumstances beyond his control. At least, if he wasn’t pregnant, once the initial uproar died down, there’d be no proof this entire nightmarish situation had ever come to pass.

* * *

Sasuke knew what a fool he’d been to think he could forget those nights on the cruise ship right as he heaved his panting body out of the river. Or, more correctly, he’d already known, already been reminded something like fifteen different times as he and Itachi cut across the choppy waters of the strait.

Itachi had pulled ahead by the time Sasuke dove in, of course, just not anywhere near far enough that Sasuke wouldn’t have been able to pin down the burning trail of his chakra signature. He’d kept the pace at something that wouldn’t strain Sasuke’s current, slightly lightheaded state. He’d offered a steady hand when they came out of the strait nearer to the lower cliffs of Igusa than they should have.

They’d both memorized the nearby terrain as part of mission prep, so their navigation northwards was carried out in uncomfortable silence. Now, as they left behind the river they’d just crossed, having long since passed the farm complex that had been their initial goal before Sasuke’s many bad decisions, Sasuke was beginning to ache all over, his body protesting the sudden switch to this much more stressful level of sustained physical activity.

(In any other context, he’d have minded that. Now, he couldn’t help but feel pathetically glad he was done feeling flushed and fidgety and deeply upset that he wasn’t being held down and drenched with come.)

What little communication they exchanged was done via signs. _Food? Water?_ Itachi would ask, and Sasuke would sign ‘ _No._ ’ or ‘ _In an hour._ ’ or ‘ _Just water._ ’ They ate while they ran, swallowing tasteless, mealy chunks of the ration bars that were all they had available. Water was gulped in small, lukewarm mouthfuls out of Sasuke’s unsealed canteen.

This time, when Itachi signed a clear request for water, Sasuke grimaced, already dreading the slightly metallic taste to come. He slowed, slipping a hand down the front of his mesh tunic, digging carefully into the small pocket sown at the neck just above the band that supported his breasts. He was thinking about Naruto’s horribly plausible theory that water stored within seals picked up traces of sealing ink when poured out. The canteen had one, since Sasuke hated having to refill it midway through missions, and though Sasuke had seen Sakura’s several ranting demonstrations that the stored water materialized from the space a hair’s breadth in front of the seal rather than the seal itself, he always found himself straining the water on his tongue, expecting a hint of something more.

Shaking his head at himself, Sasuke knocked back another gulp, swallowed, closed the canteen and looked over at Itachi, expecting… anything other than the intense, almost hungry cast to his brother’s dark gaze.

Somehow, Sasuke managed not to stumble mid-run, or drop the canteen. Somehow, he tossed it over in the right, neat little arc that meant Itachi wouldn’t have to slow his pace to receive it.

Itachi, having already refocused his attention on the canteen, opened it and drank a quick couple gulps without falling out of stride, then closed it and tossed it back. Sasuke, slightly breathless, couldn’t help but wonder if he’d just imagined that searing look.

 _Speed up?_ Itachi signed, moments later, and Sasuke nodded, storing the canteen away even as he tried to put that look out of his mind.

* * *

 _I didn’t imagine it,_ he thought, hours later, as they crept around the edge of a sleepy, humid border town. Being cautious in case of unexpected ninja sentries along this leg of their exit route didn’t require Itachi’s hand resting on his shoulder, or curling around his upper arm, or hovering a hair’s breadth from the small of his back.

Tap code didn’t need this much contact. Sasuke, though wired from just how many twitches and flinches he’d been suppressing all this time, couldn’t quite bring himself to tap back a curt, pointed ‘ _Stop it._ ’

He wanted it. He wanted Itachi’s touch, even if it could only ever be like this, these brief, tantalizing brushes in the dark, unacknowledged by both of them.

* * *

They only stopped when the sun was fully up, and they were on the edge of the scraggly forest on the border between Rivers and Grass.

“Tent?” was all Sasuke could be bothered to say, by then. One curt nod from Itachi later, he was rigging a shoddy shelter between two trees, then laying out a pallet and bundling together their dry but slightly stiff civilian clothing into a spare t-shirt as a makeshift pillow. “Don’t even think of trying to skip me for watch,” he said, as he settled in, too tired to do more than toe off his dirt-encrusted sandals. “Heat or not, I can still fucking manage it.”

“Mm.”

As Sasuke began to drift off, he felt Itachi crawl into the narrow tent, his brother’s hunched form and careful movements still straining the material. “Stop it,” he mumbled, too sleepy to second-guess himself. “Noisy.” The tent was the thin, waterproof kind, and its camouflaged fabric made those awful, whirring sounds when it came into contact with the fabric of most ninja gear. “ _Stop._ ”

“Almost done,” Itachi murmured, coming closer, shifting carefully as he laid down on the pallet beside Sasuke. Who was now suddenly quite awake. “Sorry.”

“S’fine.”

It was not fine. Itachi had slung an arm over his side, so casually and naturally that it was almost as if he was on any other mission, one with a teammate snuggling in close to share warmth.

But Sasuke not on another mission. He was not hearing Sakura grumble under her breath about how bony his elbows were, or hearing Naruto’s slight, whistling snore. He could not hear anything but Itachi’s calm, measured breaths. Could not feel anything other than that heavy arm slung over him, or the warmth of Itachi’s chest almost touching his back.

“Sleep,” Itachi murmured, his hand moving to rest lightly on Sasuke’s hip. “You need it.”

Sasuke suppressed a betraying shiver. The chiding tone in his brother’s voice… he could almost see Itachi’s slight, worried frown. Suddenly, the wordless, shameful hope rising within him melted into nothing.

 _He’s treating me like I’m a child,_ he thought. _Like I’m eleven, or I’m fifteen, and he’s worried I won’t do what’s good for me._ Sasuke had been really rebellious at that time, seething with a constant urge to push boundaries and take stupid risks in order to vent some of his endless, frustrating confusion. He’d wanted to stand out somehow, and he’d done that by sneaking into casinos, bars, brothels and fighting rings, anywhere he and his teammates or friends were supposed to be too young to go.

He’d grown out of that, just the way he’d grown out of putting unnecessary flourishes into his taijutsu just because he was fast and good enough to get away with it. But he hadn’t left behind the way Itachi’s concern made him feel.

 _Realistically,_ Sasuke told himself, though the mere thought put a lump in his throat, _the best I can expect is that afterwards, niisan treats it all as if it never happened._

Which meant, of course, that the signs he’d seen earlier, the look in Itachi’s eyes, the constant, reassuring touch, and even this—Itachi beside him, still and steady and alert, keeping watch the way you’d expect of someone with a dependent to reassure—all of the meaning he’d assigned to those actions was imaginary. They had only been the usual sign that Itachi cared, that Itachi loved him the normal way.

Sasuke closed his eyes. He breathed in and out, slowly, calmly, trying not to savour the sour smell of his brother’s sweat. _You were used to ignoring him before,_ he told himself, mercilessly. _Go back to that._


	4. exposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stop touching me.”

Sasuke hated sleeping with breasts. The tunic he was wearing was the right choice for a swift, relentless run through foreign territory, with simple internal straps you could adjust to better absorb bounce and support your chest for the long haul. Sakura had given him one for his birthday when he was, what, sixteen? Seventeen? And from then on, part of his gear budget was forever earmarked for just that purpose, for that one expensive, delightfully versatile piece of clothing, so he always had one or two spares.

(It wasn’t like Sasuke always powered through missions as a woman, or was ever required to. It was just that running in a standard civilian bra was so much of a fucking pain that he was more than happy to pay good money so that he never ever found himself forced to do it again.)

The one drawback of the otherwise light, flexible, breathable tunic was the fact that sleeping in it tended to feel like shit. Loosening the straps meant that his breasts flopped everywhere. Keeping them tightened a little seemed all right until you woke up feeling breathless and squashed from an involuntary midnight adjustment, or uncomfortable from a buckle or seam digging in in just the wrong place.

Consequently, when Itachi shook him awake for his section of the watch, Sasuke responded with an unwilling grunt, and spent the first half-hour or so of his watch glaring at the surrounding trees and stretching as much as he could.

Another half-hour later found him wriggling out from under the increasingly stifling shelter of the tent. It was a lovely, sunny day, and the trees he’d rigged the tent between weren’t anywhere near leafy enough to shade the tent’s insulated material; sitting in there for the rest of his watch would have been torture.

Here, up in the nearest tree that wasn’t nearly on top of the tent, there was at least a semblance of a breeze, and a smidgen more shade. That, and the intense musk that came from Itachi swimming through murky water and running nonstop all night was a tiny bit less daunting.

‘Daunting’, Sasuke mentally said, rather than what he knew it was, what he could feel a touch of every time he drew in a breath. Even after how much water and dirt and distance they’d put between themselves and that cursed ship, Itachi smelled of sex. Or perhaps it was just the reminder that it’d taken place, that and the false allure that it might happen again.

 _Focus,_ Sasuke chided himself. _Think about literally anything else._

And so, when Itachi finally stirred, sat up and pulled aside one of the tent walls a quarter hour or so before the end of Sasuke’s watch, Sasuke was scratching faint marks into the bark of the tree trunk as he counted each non-native plant he could find within a mile’s radius of their hasty campsite. “Something to drink?” Sasuke asked, his tone low and casual and not at all embarrassed. “It’s a pity we’re in such a rush; this area looks like it’d have decent hunting.”

Itachi rose, moving slowly, and began executing a series of careful stretches. “We’re not in that much of a rush.”

Sasuke, unable to tear his gaze away from the firm lines of his brother’s body, could only respond with a vague “oh?”

“Mm. We still have the margin of about half a day, and we’re only a couple hours’ run from our team’s meeting point.”

“Ah,” Sasuke said. Itachi was doing shoulder rolls now. “Right.” It was only when Itachi turned to look up at him that Sasuke began to process what he’d just been told. “Makes sense,” was all he could say, then, as calmly as possible. “What?”

“Get down here,” Itachi said, his gaze narrowed, his frown back in full force. “There’s no need to take unnecessary risks, otouto. Not in your situation.”

 _What fucking risks?_ Sasuke thought, but did not say, already grudgingly shifting off of his perch. _I don’t even want to be pregnant._ “I can sit down here, right?” he couldn’t help but say, pointing at the base of the tree trunk. “You don’t see anything that would present a risk?”

Itachi gave him a _look_. “Get over here,” he said, in a level tone that was nonetheless the obvious indication of an order. “I couldn’t manage a full scan of your chakra pathways last night, not without waking you; I might as well take care of that now.”

Sullenly, somehow managing to keep his expression blank and calm as anything, Sasuke walked over to stand in front of Itachi, only to be taken hold of and forcefully encouraged to sit down on the pallet. “Do I really have to be seated for this? Niisan, I’m not…” Why was his brother sitting so close? “Niisan.”

Itachi didn’t even blink. “Hand, please.” Then, to make matters worse, when his fingers closed around Sasuke’s reluctantly offered left hand, he reached up, his free hand touching—no, _caressing_ Sasuke’s cheek despite the way Sasuke flinched. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Sasuke bit out. “What are you doing?”

Itachi frowned over at him. “Conducting a check-up,” was the precise, slightly mocking answer. “What else could I possibly be doing?” Even as he said that, his wicked, horrible hand was on the move again, curling at the back of Sasuke’s neck, fingers stroking Sasuke’s suddenly all too sensitive skin there. “Relax.”

“Stop…” Sasuke blinked hard. It didn’t seem real that this was happening, that he would actually have to forcefully turn down the thing he wanted most right now. “Stop touching me.”

That Itachi’s hand paused, then lifted gently off him almost immediately did not help his state of mind one bit. “Still feeling it?”

“What do you _think_?”

“Ah,” and of course, now Itachi sounded a little embarrassed. Now, when it was too fucking late. “I’m sorry. I should have known.”

“Are you seriously going to do this?” Sasuke snapped. “We’re not—we haven’t even been punished, yet, for—for messing up a retreat even genin could have managed, and already, you’re pretending it never even happened?”

“What—”

Snarling, Sasuke reached out and _shoved_ , pressing his advantage, pettily satisfied that Itachi yielded so easily to his enraged momentum. In a flash, Itachi was sprawled out on the grassy forest floor while Sasuke sat back down at the edge of the pallet, his chest still heaving. “Don’t you dare give me that fucking look.”

“Otouto, I wasn’t—”

“No! You don’t—you can’t tell me you go around, with, with omegas you don’t want, touching them like that.” Sasuke sucked in a sharp breath, fighting to get his tone even again. “You don’t get to do that to me.”

He knew that now was the time to meet whatever guilty expression Itachi had with a steely glare. But Itachi was staring up at him as if he’d lost his mind. Or, or as if—

 _No,_ Sasuke snarled, inwardly. _Don’t let that gaze lead you astray again._ “You don’t get to do that to me,” he repeated. “So _stop_.”

Itachi straightened up out of his sprawl in slow, careful shifts, his gaze still fixed on Sasuke. “You think I don’t want you?” he growled. “You really think that?”

“What else am I supposed—hgh!” One moment, Itachi was, was _looking_ at him, and in the next, Itachi had flattened him against the pallet, pinning him down by a vice-like grip on his right shoulder. “You—you can’t—”

“I marked you,” Itachi said. “Didn’t I?”

“Y-you _bit_ me,” Sasuke insisted, even as Itachi stroked his other hand over the bruise he’d left behind. It wasn’t anywhere near the gland, that bruise, so Sasuke had assumed… “You were punishing me.”

“I didn’t need to fuck you to do that,” was the low, wry answer. “Really, otouto.”

Tears stung Sasuke’s eyes. “But…” His mouth worked, even as he fought to think of something to say, to disprove this, this miraculous information. “You mocked me.” Probably not enough. “You—you called me a slut.” He didn’t know what to make of the brief, guilty smile that tugged at Itachi’s mouth. “I… you didn’t…”

“As you already know,” Itachi said, calmly, “I’m hardly the best choice for you.”

Something about the way those simple words were said made Sasuke feel as if there was a crushing weight on his chest. _What is **wrong** with him?_ Sasuke snarled inwardly. _I’m not a good choice for him either! I’m his brother!_ That Itachi could say that he wanted… this, and worry in the same breath about what was best for Sasuke… “Niisan, you can’t just—”

Itachi’s hand stroked up the side of Sasuke’s neck, his thumb barely brushing Sasuke’s lips. “Ssh. Let me worry.”

Sasuke flushed, turning his head just enough to the side that he didn’t feel self-conscious about parting his lips to speak again. “This involves you too, though,” he insisted. “How will this work? This time, this once, Mother and Father will—they’ll be disappointed, but they’ll still think it was an accident.” He was proud of how steady his voice was when he said that, even though he could feel himself getting a little more red in the face. “But, later on…”

Sasuke couldn’t bring himself to continue. That thing Itachi had just said about marking him was—he still didn’t quite dare to believe it, to believe in what it had to mean. And it was all very well for Itachi to say that kind of thing here, with no one around for miles to hear it, with no real consequences at stake. Before, Sasuke hadn’t wanted to even think about why Itachi had been so, so ready to ‘take care’ of him, not when nothing but a well-deserved reprimand was likely to come of it. Now, Sasuke couldn’t stop thinking.

This, the way Itachi was looking at him right now, as if the two of them were the only ones in the world, even this could be illusory. Bloom affected some people like that, working with the natural surge of pheromones from both them and their partner to convince them that that a stronger connection existed than was actually true in reality. The drug had gotten to Sasuke, hadn’t it? It’d exposed him, exposed what he’d always hidden.

It would be nice to think that Itachi had hidden something like that too. That the combination of Sasuke’s shameless need and whatever slight whiff of Bloom he’d inhaled had brought his hidden desires to the fore.

If it wasn’t true, though, behaving as if it was, _planning_ as if it was would be the stupidest decision Sasuke had made on this mission. And considering all the stupid decisions he’d made so far, that would be saying something.

“What are you thinking?” Itachi had taken his hand away, had settled onto his side on the pallet right next to Sasuke. That slight, fond smile was on his face again, but now, all Sasuke could think was that that smile didn’t change the unreadable cast to Itachi’s gaze. “Tell me?”

Usually, that question was an order, even when it didn’t sound like one. Why the hell did Sasuke feel that this time, just this time, it really was only a question?

 _Be careful,_ he told himself. _Just try to be careful._ “I’m… I don’t know how to explain it,” Sasuke muttered. _A general feeling will cover it._ “I’m worried.” There was no point in saying what he was worried about; it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t soon find out whether Itachi was still coming down off some extra delusional high. “I just…”

“You don’t have to explain,” Itachi said, his tone low and serious, his widening smile adding a distinctly teasing touch to his words. “You need to be held, right?” And before Sasuke could even begin to voice a protest, Itachi had slung an arm around him and pulled him close. “Better?”

“Niisan, I’m not some sort of—I’m just worried, okay?” There was something bizarrely satisfying about complaining with his face forcibly pressed against Itachi’s chest, even though it meant a faceful of his brother’s increasingly unpleasantly ripe scent. “You make it sound like I’m, like you’re afraid I’ll _cry_.”

“But you won’t now, right?” That low, wicked response, coming from so close… “What is it?”

Sasuke somehow managed not to give in to a betraying shiver. “Nothing.”

“Really?” Okay, that was even worse, that—it should definitely be illegal to bend in like that, to speak that teasing word right against Sasuke’s flushed left ear. “I don’t know, otouto. You smell a little…”

“We’ve been running nonstop since we jumped off that ship,” Sasuke snapped, trying to back out from under Itachi’s arm without shoving or pushing at him too much. “The only way I can possibly smell is just like you: disgusting.”

Typically, that arm was lifted just enough to let Sasuke go free, only for Itachi to immediately surge forward and clamp it back around Sasuke’s waist. Ignoring Sasuke’s shocked squirming, he dragged Sasuke back down onto the pallet. His face—“Niisan, get off—”—even though it was only against Sasuke’s heaving belly, it was horribly obvious what he was trying to smell. “Don’t… ngh!”

“I haven’t even touched you,” was the heartless response. “Moaning like that, you’re already wet, right?”

Just this once, Sasuke could say the opposite and not be lying, could say that all he felt was the beginning of that familiar, pleasurable ache. But his words were being stolen away, pressed into nothing by the simple fact of Itachi’s hand sliding up between his thighs and stopping there, cupping the bunched-up material of the ninja trousers that were all that separated his palm from Sasuke’s cunt.

“Don’t,” Sasuke managed, after a long, charged pause made it clear that Itachi wouldn’t budge an inch without a response. “We have to catch up to the others. We… we don’t have time.”

This time, Sasuke didn’t need to look up to know that Itachi was smirking at him. “I can be quick,” he murmured. “If you want it, that is.”

Of course, now that Sasuke rather wished to be listened to, to be allowed to calm his unsteady breaths and racing thoughts enough so he could make the prudent response, Itachi was all searing, decisive action. He squeezed. Rubbed his hand back and forth, slowly and carefully, as if to make mock of his earlier words.

By the time Itachi slid his hand down the front of Sasuke’s trousers, Sasuke couldn’t do anything but let out a guilty moan.

“Tell me something,” Itachi said, moments later, his voice ever so slightly breathless. “These… you like them this big, right?”

Sasuke, his cunt clenched tight around two of his brother’s wicked fingers, couldn’t immediately figure out a response. By now, Itachi was looming over Sasuke, his free hand stroking casually over Sasuke’s heaving chest even as he worked his fingers in and out of Sasuke’s aching pussy down below.

“Tell me.” That was a definite order, despite the cajoling tone. When Sasuke didn’t immediately respond, he was punished with a stinging pinch of his clit, one that made his hips jerk upwards without his permission. “Tell me, otouto.”

“Nnh—I—yes—”

“Do you just like big breasts?” There was something horribly appealing about how calmly Itachi said that. “You like women with big ones like this?”

“I—n-no—”

Itachi’s fingers pinched down on his left nipple, having sought it out despite the thick fabric of his tunic. “You like having them? You like the way men look at your chest?”

That wasn’t it either, not by a long shot. Sasuke had gone for big breasts partly because the _Oiroke_ leaned towards them if you weren’t directing it otherwise. Sakura, after testing the jutsu more often than was strictly necessary, had some theory about the enlargement of sexual organs and characteristics was due to primary intent and the shoddy hand seals Naruto had chosen, but what it boiled down to was that the jutsu went for ‘bigger is better’ unless you were concentrating. Which Sasuke had definitely not been doing, too focused on resisting the urge to steal more glances at his brother while he changed form.

“I know you like them being sucked,” Itachi was saying, now, as he rubbed a third finger against Sasuke’s drenched lower lips, teasing him. “Do you like that too, as a man? Are your nipples sensitive?”

“N-not… not really,” Sasuke managed to grit out. Just thinking of Itachi’s fingers pinching him the same way he was doing now, teasing and pulling until it ached… “I’m—niisan, I—”

“You’re already going to come?” Itachi sounded like he was smiling again, though it was hard for Sasuke to see it from this angle, with Itachi’s attention focused on Sasuke’s lower body. “Slut.”

“Don’t…” _Don’t call me that,_ Sasuke wanted to say, but his mouth wouldn’t form those other words. He hated this. He loved it. The tremors built, and built again, and when they finally crested, his hips rose off the thin comfort of the pallet, and he couldn’t breathe.

“Look at you,” Itachi said, hoarsely. “I wish I could feel that.” His fingers twisted, stroking Sasuke deep within, prompting another clenching, helpless spasm. “I love how tight you get.”

“I’m… I…” Sasuke knew he shouldn’t, but he found himself spreading his thighs anyway. “I can…”

“No,” Itachi said, softly. “My control’s already a bit… You don’t mind sucking me, do you?”

“Nghn—no, I’ll—hah—”

“You’ll suck me?”

“Yes…”

“Mm.” Sasuke could hear the distinct rustle of Itachi unbuttoning himself. “You’re so good to me, otouto.”

Sasuke flushed. His angry embarrassment still didn’t stop him from opening his mouth, from licking and suckling greedily at the liquid seeping from the head of his brother’s stiff cock. It was irrational of him to feel it was better this time, better than the furtive, desperate blowjob he’d given Itachi’s clone, but he couldn’t help it.

It was just so real, like this. The smell—the salty musk of Itachi’s arousal, the heavy, ripe scent of his long-dried sweat, the off, fishy notes of their swim across the strait… And when Sasuke glanced up, it was unmistakable. This was his brother, that familiar, sunlit, stubbled face. Itachi’s gaze was red, his eyes half-lidded with evident satisfaction.

 _He wants it,_ Sasuke thought, and just for now, he decided to let himself believe it. The taste… it wasn’t good. It was bitter, and yet that only made Sasuke clench inside, because this time, he was going to taste even more than just niisan’s skin, niisan’s firm, thick cock, niisan’s salty precome. Itachi was going to come in his mouth, and he was going to gulp down every single drop.

“Easy,” Itachi murmured, when he sped up the pace enough to make himself choke. But Itachi’s hands only caressed his face and brushed against his throat, rather than hindering him. “You want to swallow it?”

“Mm-hgm.”

“Mm. I’ll… I’ll give it to you, okay?” Itachi moved his hand to the back of Sasuke’s head. “I’ll pour it all down your throat.”

“Mmgh—nhmm—hnnph—” It was too much. Itachi’s cock was pulsing within his mouth, shooting spurt after spurt of bitter, salty come that Sasuke had to struggle to swallow properly. It dripped out the sides of his mouth, staining his chin despite all his effort. Just the heavy stench of it was enough to make him clench down below, shivering as another orgasm flashed through him.

“So good,” Itachi murmured. “Did you like it? Did you like swallowing my come?”

“Mmm…”

“I’ll give you more later,” was the low, fond response. “I’ll give you as much as you ever want, otouto.”

* * *

Somehow, Sasuke thought it would take a lot longer than a day for his brother to fulfil that filthy promise. Just five hours ago, they’d caught up with the rest of the team, pausing only for a quick exchange of status signs and orders and then continuing the measured run back to Konoha.

Sasuke had also expected much more of a reaction than the short, sympathetic sigh uttered by Yamanaka Rui soon after they’d stopped for the night, offering both him and Itachi a chance to give a more detailed report. “I’m not surprised,” she’d muttered. “The payload for those bombs was a strong enough formulation that even we were affected, and we were all out in the open when they started going off.” Meaning that even though they had been able to get clear of the gas as soon as possible, it’d still had an impact. “I’m almost certain that was Kirigakure’s part in this; most of the manufacturing for the top-end strains is in Mist Country.”

Considering that Kiri had been one of the most motivated signatories to the accord, questions had been raised immediately about the validity of that deduction, only for Rui-san to sigh again, more heavily. “This isn’t confirmed,” she’d said, “but there have been many indications—including this, now, I suppose—that the major clans there are pushing for an early handover of the Mizukage’s hat.” Which very tidily explained why someone from Kirigakure would strive so hard to sabotage a diplomatic undertaking that was of evident importance to their village’s interests.

Sasuke was of course not required to sit in on the whole of that weary nighttime debriefing; as soon as he’d passed on a detailed description of their bathroom assailants and the harassing Kumo team, Rui-san sent him off with a gallant wave and an admonishment to wash up and rest. Which he’d managed well enough despite Sakura’s haranguing concern (“he _bit_ you? Was that really necessary?”) and Naruto’s badly hidden curiosity (“so in the end, was he goo—I mean, was it, y’know, okay?”).

(Somehow, the two of them managed to gloss over the fact that Sakura had gone far enough into rut that Naruto had had to fight her off, and she’d thus ended up restrained and plastered with sound-dampening seals for a good portion of their escape. “It wasn’t that bad, once Sensei managed to force-feed me a couple blockers,” Sakura had said, shrugging. “Besides, I only ended up with a couple bruises; _I’m_ not the one who got chewed on, here.”)

Despite the fuss Sasuke’s former teammates made over what had happened to him, neither of them had seemed at all troubled at the thought of his very obviously setting up his tent for use by him and Itachi. Their gazes were sympathetic, but not unbearably so; they, along with the rest of the team, were clearly taking what had happened between him and his brother for days on that cursed ship as an unavoidable nuisance. The result of a risk that most active duty ninja had to face more than once in their careers, no matter their designation.

Which meant that, that night, long after supper had been made and consumed and everyone was either on watch or in bed, it was quite easy for Itachi to slide a hot, heavy hand down between Sasuke’s thighs, groping him blatantly. Half annoyed, half unbearably aroused, Sasuke reached down to give that wandering a hand a harsh, deterring squeeze.

“Why?” Itachi whispered, his warm breath tickling the fine hair on Sasuke’s nape. “Don’t you want it?”

Frowning, Sasuke turned around to face him. “We can’t do that here,” he said, pointedly. Reasonably. “Someone will notice.”

“Not if we’re quiet.”

“You—!” Sasuke didn’t dare struggle too hard, worried that the rustling movement of their clothes against the pallet and the flimsy material of their tent’s walls would make what was going on too obvious for everyone to ignore. “Stop it…”

He was half expecting Itachi to murmur something about how everyone already knew they had fucked before, and what was one more time. Instead, all Itachi did was get in close, forcefully invading Sasuke’s already slick cunt with his wicked, relentless fingers.

“Ssh,” was what he kept murmuring. “Keep it in.”

In the end, Itachi had to cover Sasuke’s mouth to keep him from crying out. Saliva dampened Sasuke’s flushed skin, more so when Itachi finally leant in and swallowed up his helpless moans. He felt dirty, tarnished beyond belief, his body trembling and pliant and so shamefully hungry just from the touch of Itachi’s rude hands.

“No,” Sasuke kept sobbing. “They’ll… they’ll hear…”

“They’ll think I’m taking care of you,” was the low, soothing answer. “I am, aren’t I?”

Sasuke’s only response was a stifled moan. Itachi was on top of him by then, having ruthlessly crept on. Itachi’s cock was leaking all over Sasuke’s inner thighs, and even though he wasn’t trying to get it inside Sasuke’s cunt yet, it would only be a matter of time before he began.

“You’ve needed it all day,” Itachi continued. “You know that.”

“That—niisan, I’m not in heat anymore! I’m just—I’ve just been—”

“Needing it?” Itachi’s entry wasn’t quite as smooth as it’d been back on the ship, mostly because Sasuke wasn’t anywhere near as wet yet. Still, that first, shallow thrust made Sasuke whimper and angle his hips up despite himself. Soon, his left leg was hooked around Itachi’s waist, and he was working desperately in time with Itachi’s swift, brutal thrusts. “I’ll pour it in, okay? Just like you wanted.”

After that, Sasuke couldn’t muster the strength to tell his brother off. He let out a series of shamed groans instead, hating that he could be so loud when they were both so close to discovery. The fact that someone might hear them—the fact they probably _were_ being listened to, being overheard but politely ignored only heightened his pleasure.

Itachi picked up the pace. Sasuke rocked up into each hard thrust, angling up to take them in as deeply as he could. He didn’t realize Itachi was coming inside him until the liquid started trickling out, slicking their groins, forced out by the continued, violent motion of Itachi’s cock.

Just like that, Sasuke clenched down again, unable to resist the surge of pleasure taking him over. He could only just manage to hear himself whine, that slight, shameful sound smothered by Itachi’s increasingly harsh pants and satisfied groans.

 _That… is he?_ Sasuke barely managed to think. _It almost sounds like he’s going into rut._ Then Itachi shifted the grip of his hands on Sasuke’s ass, changing the angle Sasuke was receiving him, and suddenly the only thing Sasuke could focus on was that thick, huge cock slamming into his drenched, quivering pussy.

It was different to the muddled, yet hyper focused state he’d been in on the ship, and yet it was the same. So full, so _full_. Claimed.

He could feel himself crying out, but couldn’t quite hear it. It felt even better when Itachi’s knot finally slipped in. There was no way it could be wrong. He was taking in all the seed he wanted, every last drop wrung forth by the agonizing clench of his inner walls, a pain that was pleasure and then pain again.

“Ssh,” Itachi said, finally. But Sasuke couldn’t quite manage to stop whimpering, at least until he felt the light, yet reassuring graze of his brother’s teeth against the side of his neck. The side with his gland, which ached now, as if he’d already been thoroughly bitten there. “I won’t pull out, otouto. Sleep.”

Sasuke’s eyes closed on their own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this, we're now on par with all of the chapters I've been posting on FFA 😄
> 
> Next chapter to come once I've edited + posted it all on meme, which should probably be middle of next week.


	5. claimed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Niisan’s an idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go, one heaping helping of fraught, angsty confrontations coming right up!

Sasuke knew what was wrong—what had gone wrong, what had been allowed to go wrong—pretty much immediately. He woke up nestled in against Itachi’s chest, naked even though he didn’t remember getting undressed, and very, very full of come, his cunt stopped up by Itachi’s swollen knot.

On the ship, the eventual need for escape had kept the two of them on task, focused on resisting the full, terrifying slide into uncontrolled lust. Sasuke’s clearheaded moments back then were all due to the training every ninja got once they hit chunin, a gruelling two weeks of being high on the safer strains of judgement-affecting cocktails, most of them sexual.

That said, it wasn’t all that difficult to keep control while under stress when there was something serious at stake, especially when the rest of your peers were there suffering alongside you, resisting each new wave of instability with all they had. The instructors had warned them all over and over again that the most dangerous time wasn’t while you were impaired, but after you’d gotten to a safer location, or achieved enough of your objectives to be able to afford to relax a little.

That was why you didn’t stop your blockers the moment you were off mission. Why official post-mission briefings were usually quick, simple affairs, followed by two days for mandatory decompression, so you had a chance to adjust and to let loose some of what you’d been holding back.

Last night, Itachi had done a lot more than just let loose.

 _He marked me,_ Sasuke thought, incredulously, unable to mistake the throbbing ache of his gland for anything else. _He marked me, just like that._

Trying to turn his head made him wince; the left side was heavily bruised due to the marking, but the other side wasn’t much better. It felt like Itachi had bitten him over and over again.

Clearly, this was far beyond the kind of thing that’d leave a black mark on Sasuke’s record, and end in a private but serious reprimand for Itachi. This… Sasuke could think of plausible reasons for why last night had gotten so out of hand, but every reason that came to mind reflected poorly on Itachi.

Itachi had run out of blockers due to overuse on the ship. By the time Sasuke was clearheaded enough to dig into his own stash, they were already en route again, and were both calm enough that there seemed to be no further need of them. Even so, they’d kept on—they’d continued sexual contact while on the run, though by then, Sasuke was well able to function without it. And then, to cap it all off, Sasuke had gone ahead and fallen under Itachi’s sway last night, letting himself go so far out of control that he had no way of resisting a marking.

If either of them had been on the watch roster last night, they would almost certainly have missed their turn. And of course there was the fact that they were brothers. That they had more reason than normal to keep their distance from each other, to be wary of the things their designations made them susceptible to.

Shuddering, Sasuke closed his stinging eyes. _I don’t want this. I didn’t want it to be like this._

But if not this, then what?

“Awake?”

Gods, the feeling of hearing Itachi’s voice like this, a rumble Sasuke could feel all along his side as well as hear. “Yes,” he choked out, torn between the urge to snuggle closer and the knowledge that he should be pulling away. “You—you—”

Itachi’s hand stroked a warm line up his bare back, silencing him. Then: “You can hit me.”

Sasuke gritted his teeth, unable to express just how inadequate that response was in this situation. “So,” he finally said, his voice tight with fury, “so you know you need a beating now, hm?” His teeth itched, but he doubted that giving his brother a savage bite on his chest or upper arm would really be the punishment the animal in him was telling him it would. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Itachi let out a soft, nearly soundless sigh. “I won’t lie to you, otouto. I’m… I should have asked, before—”

“Asked _what_?” Now, Sasuke could just about manage to force himself to pull away, to lean back enough that he could see Itachi’s shuttered, pained expression fully. “Well?”

(Sasuke knew he could activate his eyes, to make sure of what he was being told. He knew what it said about his willpower when it took him an agonizing moment of indecision before he finally did activate them.)

Itachi’s gaze lowered. “I should have asked how… public you want this to be.”

“…public?”

“Yes.”

Sasuke’s heart was beating hard, his thoughts revolving noisily around that one, definite, meaningful word. “That… I’ll have to think about it,” he mumbled, though a large part of him was screaming ‘yes’ at the top of its lungs, feeling embarrassingly giddy at the mere thought of it. “You—even if that’s, that’s your aim, doing it like this isn’t right.”

 _No one will want to steal him from me,_ Sasuke thought greedily, even as he said those admonishing words. _No one else could seriously want someone so depraved that they’d make no secret of wanting to fuck their brother._

“I’m sorry,” Itachi murmured, his hand moving again, shifting up to caress the back of Sasuke’s neck. “I got ahead of myself.”

“Hn,” was all Sasuke could trust himself to say without sounding too breathless. When Itachi urged him closer, he complied with an annoyed huff. “Don’t do this kind of thing to me again without asking.”

“I won’t, otouto,” Itachi said, solemnly, the grave tone of his voice only heightening the rush Sasuke felt on hearing it from close by. “I promise.”

* * *

Somehow, even though Sasuke was primed for a generally poor reaction to Itachi marking him, he was still not at all expecting Kakashi-sensei to be the angriest authority on hand.

Where Rui-san scowled, and gave vent to forceful sighs and disappointed glares in Itachi’s direction, Kakashi didn’t stop crinkling his eyes in their usual polite smile throughout Itachi’s low, measured admittance of fault. Afterwards, though, after Itachi had stopped speaking, and Rui-san was done scolding him and fussing over Sasuke…

“Consider yourself on midnight-to-dawn watch for the rest of the run back,” Kakashi said, his voice pleasant, yet carrying a steely undertone. “Oh wait, that’s just a few more hours now, isn’t it? Consider yourself on that watch for the next month or so in any of your missions that require a watch, then.”

“Yes, senpai.”

“I think it would also be best that the two of you refrain from sharing a tent for the time being,” Kakashi continued. “If you can bear it, of course.”

“I can, senpai.”

“I didn’t mean you,” was the immediate answer, said in a tone of faint, pointed surprise. “Sasuke-kun, you can bear it, right? It is just a temporary mark, after all. It shouldn’t give you too much trouble, especially with a blocker in effect.”

“N-no, sensei, I’ll be fine.”

“Then that’s settled,” Kakashi said, cheerfully. He shifted a little on his feet, his right arm twitching forward for a moment before going still again. Sasuke, all too used to being patted sarcastically on the head whenever that cheerful tone came out, felt momentarily confused that said head-pat wasn’t forthcoming, at least until he remembered the reddened bruise covering his neck gland as well as the fact that Kakashi-sensei was an alpha.

(Well, Sakura swore he was, and Naruto mostly went along with it even though Sensei was pretty much the least alpha-like alpha they’d all ever met. He didn’t carry himself like an alpha even though he boasted enough for two. However, said boasts were always about weird nonsense like how many bags of rice he could carry under one arm, so that and the fact that he was so polite and invisible when none of them were making a mistake he could sigh at them for meant that Sasuke always forgot.)

No one else in the delegation expressed an opinion on what had happened. Though that was mostly because they were on the run again once breakfast and Itachi’s semi-public admonishment by Rui-san was over, and because Sakura and Naruto kept up a stream of exaggerated jokes and anecdotes all while pointedly keeping their bodies between him and Itachi rather than saying anything on the subject.

In this kind of situation—in the situation everyone on the delegation likely assumed Sasuke was in—the right of violent response went first to the victim, then to their team lead, and then to the victim’s teammates, before falling to anyone else. And even when a violent response was warranted, it was usually postponed while on mission, since immediate retaliation could jeopardise mission objectives. Enemy assailants received their reckoning while the team withdrew from the field; allied assailants received punishment on their return to safer territory.

So as the hours mounted up, as quick rest breaks passed and the greenery thickened around them, Sasuke couldn’t help but feel increasingly anxious about the reckoning that he knew was coming. The tense atmosphere of the whole group contributed to their pace enough that they were going to reach Konoha well before nightfall, which meant that the chance for a somewhat private confrontation between his former teammates and Itachi was fading fast.

Ironically, the issue of whether Sakura and Naruto ended up confronting his brother in the middle of the woods or right on the front steps of the Hokage Tower wasn’t the real problem. Embarrassing as the latter would be, even then, his teammates wouldn’t do anything crazy like trying to start a duel. Not because they thought they wouldn’t win (definitely true; Itachi hadn’t been an S-ranked entry in every bingo book for the last five years for no reason), but because that kind of straightforward confrontation was only their second favourite way of dealing with people they disliked.

Most likely, they’d call Itachi aside, ask pointed questions and demand another apology for Sasuke. They’d grumble at the quality of said apology when it was offered, then pretend to be unsatisfied but willing to let things go. Then, a week or so after they’d all returned to Konoha, Naruto and Sakura would devote their every effort to covertly making Itachi’s life hell.

Expensive takeaway ordered in his name, call girls and boys turning up to make tearful demands at the worst possible time, spontaneous-seeming pest infestations, mysterious holes appearing in the walls, graffiti written in paint that would smear everywhere when you tried to use the usual solvents to get rid of it… Sasuke had contributed both inspiration and several horrible hours as a test subject in the process of refining that special blend of petty torment. He knew how bad his friends could get, and how hard it was to prevent certain facets of their usual tricks without someone assigned on watch 24/7.

So, much as Sasuke _did not want_ Naruto and Sakura to know just how much of a desperate slut he was, there was no way he wasn’t going to drag them aside and speak up. He just didn’t know how to frame it, what words to grit out.

He had to be calm, but not too calm, because they would worry. He could probably make it sound like—

Who the hell was he kidding? How in all the gods’ names was he supposed to reshape the facts of what he’d done—what he’d begged for, over and over and over again, from his _brother_ —so that they’d understand it hadn’t all been Itachi’s fault that Sasuke had ended up marked?

“Last break,” Sensei called out. “Keep it quick, everyone. We’re almost there.”

“Finally,” Naruto muttered, the way he always did towards the end of any mission, as if all the miles between him and a bowl of celebratory ramen were the result of some vast conspiracy. Except, of course, for the fact that his casual stretch allowed him to keep an eye on where Itachi was standing halfway across the clearing. “Drink?”

“Both of you need to listen to me,” Sasuke rushed to say, as quietly as possible. “Yes, Sakura, that means you too.”

“Oh?” Sakura turned her own flinty gaze away from Itachi as well, an unsettling amount of excitement on her face. “What’s first, huh? Seal splash?”

“No way, all his seals are at least partly covered by gear or his clothes,” Naruto said, his wide grin an equally unsettling contrast to his low, tense tone. “Stink delay’s easy, I’ve got the powder for it.”

“Come on, like anyone will even smell it over all the crud we’ve picked up while running—that’s letting him off way too easy!” Sakura rolled her head and shoulders in a languid stretch, never quite taking her idle gaze off of where Itachi was still standing a little way apart from Koga-san, Nara Shinobu and Umeda. “I bet I can land a delayed disruptor on him. It’ll fade into his chakra, too; it’ll take him at least a few days to figure out why his seals keep failing.”

“He’ll know it was us,” Naruto said, now bent in an exaggerated stretch against the tree beside Sasuke. “Better to keep him guessing.”

“I _want_ him to know it was us,” was the angry retort. “He’s your brother, Sasuke, but that doesn’t mean everything he does can just be forgiven.”

“You guys,” Sasuke said, in a low, strangled tone, “can you both just shut up? No, _shut up_! I… on the ship, I was the one who—”

“You were high on Bloom!”

“Yeah! And, y’know, on the ship’s one thing; what about how he went after you when you guys joined up with us again?”

“Exactly! He’s staring at us right now, like we’re the ones you need to worry about—don’t _look_ , he’ll just take it as the excuse to try and come over here…”

Their concern for him would almost have been funny if it weren’t breaking his heart to imagine how that concern would change when they knew the truth. “I’ve always wanted this with him,” Sasuke somehow managed to say. “Always.”

A brief, palpably tense silence fell between them, making the murmured conversations and rustles of the rest of the delegation stand out unnaturally. Sasuke, bleeding inside, tried to psyche himself up to break the silence by shifting on his feet, only to step directly on a twig that cracked so loudly it almost made him flinch.

“That’s…” Naruto opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. “Uh.”

Sakura just scowled harder. “Even if it’s like that,” she said, her clipped words carrying a tone of slight uncertainty, “he still shouldn’t have… I mean, we’re on mission! Marking you that publicly is just…”

Naruto nodded firmly for emphasis, but didn’t say anything himself.

“He knows,” Sasuke said, his voice cracking slightly. “When we’re back home, I’ll punish him.”

“How?” Sakura said, so sceptically that Sasuke couldn’t help keep back a wry smile. “Oh come on, we both know how you are about Itachi, even without… All I’m saying is if there’s going to be any actual punishment for this, it’ll have to come from us.”

“Please hold off on that,” Sasuke whispered. “Just for a while. Okay?”

Sakura let out a long, exaggerated sigh. Naruto shook his head, hard. Even so, there was much more tension in the way both of them were standing now, the way it only ever was when they’d just been convinced not to unleash themselves on someone.

That said, it was always best to at least get a verbal confirmation. “Okay?” Sasuke said. “You won’t…?”

“Fine,” Sakura snapped, the first to crumble as always. “Ugh.” One more beseeching glance in Naruto’s direction made him nod again, this time more slowly.

“Just as long as he eventually knows he owes us one through you,” Naruto said. “And he better not forget it.”

Sasuke nodded. Sakura sighed again, but said nothing, her tacit agreement with that ominous statement from Naruto clearly apparent.

“Form up,” Kakashi-sensei said, just loudly enough that it was obviously an order. “Let’s see if we can all get home for dinner.”

* * *

They managed a dinnertime return by only a hair, having encountered two different patrols on their way to Konoha. Protocol dictated a pause each time to exchange intelligence, and even though everyone involved had better things to do than stand around chatting for a quarter of an hour, that still ended up happening anyway.

Each time, Sasuke couldn’t help but feel an increasing amount of nerves just from watching the patrol group they’d met up with picking up on the strange social undercurrent active in the their own group. He thought it was lucky there was only one Uchiha out of the eight or so people they met that way, and that said Uchiha was his cousin Kenichi, who had negative interest in paying attention to anything other than keeping fit or taking assiduous care of his back garden.

Even Kenichi had noticed something was off in the way Itachi stood slightly apart from the rest of the delegation, but at least Sasuke could be sure he’d just file it away as something he didn’t want to get involved with. The other members of both patrols aimed a curious glance or two in Itachi’s direction, and though they didn’t ask, it was sure to be something that would come up in their idle discussion later. Gossip was one of the few more-or-less-sanctioned ways to liven up a dull patrol route, and one of the Uchiha geniuses being alienated after a failed mission was certain to be of note to anyone with an interest in trading titbits like that.

 _It’s only going to get worse,_ Sasuke told himself, as they finally approached the towering gate, all a tiny bit out of breath from the hard pace they’d set for the very last segment of the trip. _If everyone knows we’re involved,_ well, ‘knows’ was a strong word, it’d probably be more along the lines of ‘strongly suspects’, _there’s always going to be that extra bit of scrutiny._

He didn’t know if he could handle it. Yet, the thought of concealing the sordid relationship he and Itachi desperately wanted wasn’t comfortable either. Itachi was old enough by now that he kept getting pressured into going for marriage meetings every so often, and Sasuke wasn’t all that far from having Mother sit him down for his first roundabout discussion of what he might like in a partner.

He’d been dreading that, thinking of how anxious Mother would feel if both her sons had no apparent interest in getting married, and no long list of former girlfriends or boyfriends on tap as reassurance. Sasuke had barely skated by all these years partly because of his period of teenage rebellion; none of the few people he’d brought home for family meals had been at all acceptable to Mother.

He’d been thinking about how to solve that, not seriously, but in the sort of general, depressed way you thought about things you didn’t want to do, but felt you had to. He’d joked inwardly about the thought of roping in Sakura as his fake girlfriend more than once or twice, but never even thought of going ahead with it because he knew in his bones that Mother would not just take him at his word, but be positively overjoyed at forging a link with a respectable trading concern on Uzu.

Now, though, now that he could have Itachi… he didn’t know if he could bear to settle for anything less. At least not with close family, with his closest friends, with all the people who knew him best.

“Dismissed,” Rui-san said, her crisp tone breaking apart Sasuke’s muddled haze. “Please hand in your full reports within two days, and don’t forget about the full debriefing Thursday evening.”

A covert glance in Sakura’s direction assured Sasuke that nothing important had been said; Naruto could probably doze through a Great Hunt, but Sakura would never allow herself to look that close to falling asleep unless there really had been nothing to pay attention to.

“A word, Uchiha-san,” was the next thing Rui-san said, even as the rest of the delegation team started trudging towards the door. “Not you, Sasuke-kun; what _you_ need is a rest and a visit to the hospital. The latter can probably wait a few hours, but the other? Home, young man, and straight to bed.”

Somehow, Sasuke managed not to look in his brother’s direction, though he desperately wanted to. He didn’t want to look any more dependent on Itachi than was absolutely necessary. Even though he didn’t know precisely what sort of conclusion Rui-san and Kakashi-sensei had drawn from all that had happened, but he doubted it would help to be seen taking his cues from Itachi.

(“Do you object to this marking?” Rui-san had asked this morning, her tone calm and encouraging and so not what Sasuke deserved to hear.

“I do not.”)

“If you two don’t mind, I’ll just steal Sasuke-kun for a bit, hm?” That was Sensei, smiling the way he always did, even as the firm grip he had on Sakura and Naruto’s shoulders implied his request wasn’t really one. “Ichiraku tomorrow, on me?”

“…whatever.” That was Naruto, yawning so widely you worried he’d crack something.

“Don’t keep him up too late,” Sakura said, pointedly. “He was going blank back there; another hour and he’ll probably just fall asleep right where he’s standing.”

Kakashi-sensei chuckled, waving the other two off, and then it was just him and Sasuke, already heading in the direction of the sprawling neighbourhood where most of the Uchiha lived. Sasuke felt an odd mix between wired and exhausted. He didn’t stumble as they strolled along at ground level, but he had to pay attention to keep himself on track, and worse, he could feel Kakashi noting that and filing it away as… as _something_ , something important, some sign of what Itachi had done to him.

“You know what I’m going to ask,” Kakashi said, when they were halfway to Sasuke’s home. “Right?”

It would be simple to nod, to sigh, to carefully, gently frame what Itachi had done as an accident. As something Sasuke was dismayed and upset by, but had already forgiven, and was not afraid would happen again. That kind of explanation would be as false as it was simple, but easy to give voice to, to live with. It was probably what Kakashi expected, and was probably also the kind of explanation he would heartily disapprove of.

It would be more difficult to nod, to hold his breath and wait for Kakashi-sensei’s attention to sharpen to a point, and only then admit that he’d wanted everything that had happened. That Itachi was at fault, but so was he. That kind of explanation was not so difficult Sasuke could not imagine going through with it. Sensei would likely disapprove even more, but still try to understand.

Sasuke couldn’t bring himself to begin with either explanation. They were stopped in an alley a little ways off from the street his Great-Aunt Miyako lived on, and he knew how that had happened—he’d chosen it—but still couldn’t quite believe where he’d ended up, nonetheless.

Just like this whole fucking mission.

 _The second one,_ Sasuke told himself. _The second explanation is at least mostly true. Go for that._ Instead, what came out was: “Niisan’s an idiot.”

Kakashi blinked. “Ah?”

Probably because that wasn’t how you accused someone of raping you. Or not quite raping you. Sasuke had thought his eyes would be stinging right now, that he’d be incoherent and on the way to breaking down, but all he felt was a sort of focused, angry intent, a desire to tear down juxtaposed by an even greater desire to monopolize, to protect. “He miscalculated,” Sasuke found himself continuing. “He’s… he’s like me. Scared.”

Then, when Kakashi just went on looking at him, and listening: “I wasn’t high on Bloom, on the ship. I mean, I was, but…” He didn’t know why this was so easy to say to Kakashi, this kind of thing that he’d barely been able to even begin to explain to his friends. Maybe the second time was easier. “I knew what I was doing. I took advantage of his… his kindness.”

“Kindness?” And wasn’t that just Kakashi-sensei all over, the sheer amount of disapproval he could load onto one word. He was almost as bad as Mother.

“He took advantage of me too,” Sasuke said, instead of explaining himself. “I know that. I still want him.”

“Sasuke—”

“I’m not saying this so you’ll let him off,” Sasuke hurried to say. “I hope he gets punished. He _embarrassed_ me.” And now he was angry again, and sad, and frustrated, and upset because he knew how that last phrase made him look. How petty he sounded. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want him.”

Sensei sighed. “Anything else I should know?”

“I’m,” Sasuke said, his mouth dry, his heart pounding. “I’m probably… I think he made me pregnant.”

There was something oddly reassuring about the way Kakashi-sensei reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Other than that, Sasuke. Things that weren’t already in your preliminary report.”

Sasuke opened and closed his mouth. _I’m… if I can have him, if I can keep Itachi, I’m probably going to keep the baby too,_ he wanted to say. Wished he dared to say. “No, sensei.”

Kakashi sighed again, this one short and forceful. “Okay. Shall we?”

The rest of the walk to Sasuke’s home went in awkward silence.

Then, at the gate to his family compound, Kakashi cleared his throat, and Sasuke froze. He didn’t know what he was expecting to hear then—condemnation, perhaps, polite but obvious. Or worse, sympathy, one Sasuke could not at all believe in.

(None of what they’d just discussed had touched on what _Sasuke_ had done wrong. Or on how he would be punished.)

“If this ever stops being what you want,” Kakashi said, in a matter-of-fact tone more suited to a talk about the next step in Sasuke’s career, or his direction of specialization in ninjutsu, “talk to me.”

Not ‘talk to me and I’ll solve him’, but ‘talk to me, and I’ll listen’. Sasuke could tell the difference, after all these years; Kakashi-sensei smiled more when hinting at violence, but it wasn’t just that. There was a serious cast to his tone as well, one that made him sound a little stuffed up.

Probably the proper thing to do would have been to nod and whisper his thanks. Instead, Sasuke found himself blinking back sudden, stupid tears and saying: “What if he doesn’t… what if it’s more, it’s relationship… stuff?”

“Ah,” Kakashi said. “You’ll want your teammates for that. Definitely.” Uncomfortable as he seemed, he still waited patiently for Sasuke to find some small measure of composure and head into the compound. Only when Sasuke reached the second, unbarred gate did his sensei turn around and stroll off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter _should_ be up by the end of this weekend? I thought this was just going to be six longish chapters and a shorter seventh, but rereading what I've got so far makes me want to write a bit more. We'll see I guess XD
> 
> Also, you might have noticed how Itachi neatly side-stepped Sasuke's rightful anger and redirected his attention elsewhere with just one sentence. Talk about knowing your audience ;D


	6. bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I intend to do my duty to him so long as we both live.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on re-posting this from meme /o\\. Now for more emotional confrontations, and the final stretch of the central plot :D
> 
> **Edited on 9/16/20** because I wanted to change a particular sentence.

Sasuke couldn’t help but feel abjectly grateful that no one was there when he entered the house. _It’s Thursday,_ he thought, as he took off his filthy sandals and put on his slippers. _They’re probably having dinner at Uncle Ichirou’s._ Much as Father complained how Uncle Ichirou was lacking in the proper grandeur and comportment a clan head should have, he never missed a chance to linger there drinking sake and gossiping with all the other easygoing clan elders.

Mother would likely be home first, since she preferred having the drinks-and-gossip after-dinner gathering on her own territory, and Aunt Fumi nearly always went along with what she wanted. So if Sasuke hurried, he’d have just enough time to grab a bite and have a quick wash without any risk of being questioned about how the mission had gone.

Honestly, he was looking forward to a chance for a hot bath more than anything else. Dipping in a chilly forest stream was nowhere near enough to get you feeling really clean, especially not when you had ten minutes at most to get yourself washed, dried and dressed again. Still, he made a trip to the fridge, picking out a half-empty bowl of onigiri and a nearly empty jar of pickles to serve as a quick meal.

That done, Sasuke headed upstairs and beelined for the bathroom. He turned on the taps, then lost a few moments weighing the scolding he’d get for eating in here while he waited for the bath to be ready. Then, when he slumped to an awkward seat on the cold tiles, plate still in hand, his various aches and pains reminded him of the other, much more serious scolding he was going to be in for.

_I’m in for it already,_ Sasuke thought, mulishly, already starting to poke at his food with chopsticks from his travel kit. _Getting scolded a little more won’t matter._ He’d forgot to grab chopsticks from the kitchen on his way up here, and the thought of lumbering downstairs just for that was intolerable, especially when that meant he’d be further away from his impending bath.

Soon enough, his plate was empty, and the bath was halfway full, and not so hot that it’d have him sweating immediately when he got out. Pausing to set the empty plate outside, Sasuke stripped in record time, his gear going mostly back into his storage seals even though that would only mean more work determining what was clean and what wasn’t. He felt too drained to go through his usual routine of organizing all the stuff he’d used. That, he thought, could definitely wait till tomorrow.

He was midway through a quick, but thoroughly satisfying shower when Mother opened the door and ducked her head in. “I heard things didn’t go too… well…”

_Fuck,_ Sasuke thought, freezing beneath the spray. _Thought I had more time._ “Mother, it’s not—”

“What happened to you?” she snarled. “Who could—who would have dared—”

“It’s not what you think!” Except that it sort of was, if you thought about it. Which he absolutely did not want her to do. “It was the best of bad options.” True-ish, but would sound better if his voice still wasn’t so high in pitch. Suddenly, the thought of lying about just who was responsible for the purpling mark and the other suggestive bruises on his neck and his breasts seemed incredibly tempting. “Itachi and I… we had to.” Sasuke knew he should probably be explaining precisely what had happened, knew Mother would find out it out anyway, the way she always did, but the look on her face right now… “It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks, I promise.”

Mother’s lips pressed into a thin, unhappy line. “Finish your bath first,” she said. “I’ll be downstairs.”

There was no need for her to hint that he should come down to speak with her after he was done. That, from her tone, was clearly not optional.

_This isn’t good,_ Sasuke thought, shivering a little as he ducked back under the spray. _But if I stall, if I just say the right things, it’ll probably work out._ Baring his heart to Sensei or to his friends was one thing; admitting to his parents that he’d always wanted his brother to claim him was completely different.

What Mother needed now was reassurance, was to know that even though things had gone fairly wrong, Sasuke was going to be okay. He would give her that. It’d be an awkward conversation, but nothing like the one it could so easily become if he wasn’t careful. Naturally, she’d look back in suspicion on the way he’d phrased things, but she’d only suppose that he’d wanted to keep her from blaming Itachi too much for marking him.

Which was true, when you thought about it from a certain, twisted point of view. The last thing Sasuke wanted was for Mother to embark on one of her dramatic freeze-outs when Itachi didn’t deserve one. He’d cope with it if it happened, of course, but he still didn’t want to slog through the two and a half weeks or so it would take for Mother to start inviting Itachi to dinner at home again.

“Alright,” Sasuke muttered to himself, once he was clean enough. “Time to get going.” He glanced at the now full, steaming bath and tried not to sigh too heavily at the fact that he probably wouldn’t get to enjoy it tonight; reassuring Mother was going to take long enough that Father’d be home by then too, and if there was anything Sasuke knew about his father, it was that the man hogged the bath like it was a competition, and nagged worse than anything while you were sharing it with him too.

Turning off the taps took only a moment. Dressing took a little longer than he’d expected, since a quick look through his storage seals showed that none of his field gear was anything better than moderately filthy. He had to wrap up in a towel, gather the few things he hadn’t sealed (his house slippers, a pair of kunai and his I-have-breasts tunic) and trudge along to his room, towelling his hair along the way.

He’d reorganized his wardrobe out of nerves before he left for the mission, so the hunt for a t-shirt, a bra, panties and a skirt took even more time. By the time Sasuke stomped downstairs, he was beginning to be in a foul mood, and thus not at all in the best shape to project the needed calm and acceptance for Mother’s sake.

Which made it even worse when a casual glance into the informal living room showed Itachi on his knees before their pale-faced, red-eyed parents.

For a long, long moment, Sasuke just stood there, half in and half out of the living room. Then the slipper on his back foot fell off with a quiet thump, and both those angry red gazes snapped to him. “Mother, it’s not what—”

“Sasuke,” Father said, tonelessly, “come in and sit.”

_No,_ Sasuke wanted to say. _This isn’t…_ Right? Fair? Even before he shuffled into the room, he could feel the awful pressure within, the tension that came from an impending struggle. This wasn’t just a reprimand for losing control and marking your brother while in rut; this was, it _had_ to be more.

“Your slipper,” Mother said, calmly. “You left it at the door.”

“Once you have it,” Father said, only a shred of warmth in that terrible, toneless voice, “take a seat.”

That Itachi was still kneeling was not just ignored. Father’s gaze was fixed on him, yet almost unseeing. As if Father was trying to see through to the delicate pattern of the rug beneath Itachi’s knees.

“Sasuke?” That was Mother again, a slight tremor in her voice. “Your slipper is—”

“I know,” Sasuke mumbled. He couldn’t look away from Itachi. _He’s not just an idiot,_ he thought. _Niisan’s suicidal. Fucking suicidal._

He still went forward, feeling the cool, slightly clammy texture of the wood beneath his left foot, and soon the carpet, which was a surprisingly rough weave despite its appearance. Sasuke could imagine how bad it would feel, kneeling on it for a decent amount of time.

He still knelt.

“Sasuke.” Mother, again. “He does not deserve—”

“I want him,” Sasuke mumbled, his gaze now firmly fixed on the carpet before him. _That definitely gets easier to say._ “It wasn’t just his fault.”

Silence fell around them. Sasuke had knelt down close enough to Itachi that he could not quite make out his expression without turning to look at him. Which he naturally couldn’t do right now, not in this crushing atmosphere.

“No,” Mother said, finally, that one word as good as a sentence. “Absolutely not.”

“Mother, please—”

“ _No._ ”

Silence again, this one heavier than the last. Sasuke shifted a little, trying to ease more of his skirt hem beneath his knees to serve as a cushion. It wouldn’t help much, but a little relief now might let him endure for longer.

“Get up, Sasuke,” Father said, after a moment. “There’s no reason to suffer unnecessarily.”

Sasuke didn’t look up. He could see Itachi’s fist tightening out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not kneeling unnecessarily.”

“Sasuke,” Mother snapped, “for goodness’ sake—”

“Get up,” Itachi said, hoarsely, that quiet interjection smothering hers as if he’d shouted it. “Now, Sasuke.”

Flushing, raging within ( _of course he chooses **right now** to play my alpha_), Sasuke rose back to his feet, then, after thinking for a moment, took a couple steps back and to the right and sat down formally. It would end up hurting even more in the long run, but it still expressed his position.

It also made every one of his family members fix him with a disapproving gaze. Itachi’s gaze was softest, and he was the first to look away, the first to refocus on the real issue. “Mother,” he said, calmly, his tone as formal as his straightened, upright posture, “Father, I have failed you.”

He had been the one to teach Sasuke this branch of etiquette, in a way. Itachi had practised his own on Sasuke, making a silly game of it, solemnly promising to withhold the dreaded tickles if Sasuke could help him remember who should be addressed first in a semi-formal context.

Itachi was bowing down now, his forehead meeting the carpet for one careful instant before he straightened up again. “Mother,” he said again. “Father. I have failed in my duty as your son, and in my duty as an older brother.”

“And as an alpha?” Mother said, sharply. “Don’t tell me you really think you can leave that out.”

Ignoring her, Itachi bowed again, then straightened, slowly. “I have had no duty to anyone as their alpha,” he said. “At least not until a few days ago.”

“You—”

“Mikoto,” Father said, the hand he’d placed on Mother’s arm seeming to be the only thing that kept her from charging forward and laying into Itachi. “Please.”

Mother snarled, shrugging his hand off, but she settled somewhat, shifting back in her seat on the couch, making herself insolently comfortable. Sasuke saw this mostly via careful, swift sideways glances, and couldn’t help but worry; he knew very well that the more Mother shed her usual restraint, the more danger they were in.

“I have made grievous missteps,” Itachi continued. “Sasuke was made to worry when he should have had no worries at all. And I marked him so carelessly that it brought him scrutiny instead of comfort. That is my shame.”

“Only that?” Father said, his pointed tone not quite sarcastic, but certainly approaching it. “I feel shamed, hearing it.”

“Nevertheless,” Itachi said, as if he hadn’t heard that vicious dig, “I intend to do my duty to him so long as we both live.”

“Derailing one career isn’t enough for you, is it?” Mother said, a snarl in her undertone. “That was his first S-rank, Itachi! You _know_ how important performance is on that one, and you still—”

“Mother, you can’t just—”

“She’s right, Sasuke,” Itachi said, his head turned back just enough for Sasuke to see a flash of his self-deprecating smile. “I dragged you down, this time.” There was a hint of steel beneath those words. A stern reminder for Sasuke to keep his mouth shut, to sit pretty and let Itachi take all of the blame for him.

He didn’t want to. “But—”

“When I said I dragged him down this time,” Itachi said, relentlessly, facing forward again, “I meant just that. This time. It will not ever happen again.”

“Are you insane? Or do you think we’re both stupid?” Father let out a short, disgusted sigh. “You think we don’t know what you’re building up to, your little plan to walk out of this house, while _dragging_ him after you—”

“Making an fuss about him moving in with me will only draw more attention,” Itachi said, blandly. “Surely that isn’t what you want.”

Snarling, Mother surged to her feet. “Words aren’t going to be enough to quell this kind of stupidity, Fugaku,” she said, pushing aside Father’s somewhat apathetic bid to hold her back. “This little fool won’t see the light unless we beat it into him.”

The truly terrifying thing wasn’t the way Father sighed, but said nothing against it; it was the way Itachi nodded, then pushed back onto his feet in one smooth, graceful motion. “Here, Mother?”

Sasuke nearly fell on his face in his bid to scramble up and get himself between the two of them, ignoring the hand Itachi clamped around his arm, ignoring Mother’s still-red, forbidding gaze. “No,” Sasuke said, breathlessly. “Not here. Not anywhere. Not ever.”

“Sasuke—”

“ _No!_ ” He didn’t even know who’d said his name. He didn’t care. “It’s simple, Mother. We’re—I’m moving out, and you disapprove, and that’s it. That’s all of it.”

“But—”

“No. That’s it. It’s done.” Sasuke had very little confidence that any further discussion wouldn’t end in his mother and his brother doing their level best to try to kill each other at this point. The only thing he could think to do was leave. “Come on, niisan. We’re going.”

Itachi didn’t need to be tugged more than once before he stirred into action, offering the slight, polite bow any guest would give on their way out. Seeing that motion made Mother’s expression twist; but luckily, the next moment had Father standing up and coming to take careful, restraining hold of her arm.

Sasuke urged his brother all the way to the front door in a panicky haze. He barely remembered to change into his sandals before they left; he only noticed Itachi had forgotten to do so when they were out of the compound and in the mostly empty street, and by then, there was no going back.

“Home?” Sasuke said, desperate to get Itachi moving again, to jolt him out of the dazed stare he was directing down at his slippered feet. “Please?”

“Mm.” Though that was an absent-minded response, it did seem to reorient Itachi enough that he began walking again. The journey passed in eerie mutual silence, the shuffle of their footsteps and the light thumps of them jumping from roof to roof the only sounds they produced.

The last dregs of tonight’s sunset were more than enough to light their way. The wind was up, thankfully, so they weren’t sweating too much by the time they arrived at Itachi’s apartment block near the Hokage Tower. They entered it in slightly breathless silence, Itachi guiding Sasuke over to one of the boxy chairs at the kitchen table and then looming over him as he sat and covered his face.

“I’m not crying,” Sasuke murmured. Feeling as if he might burst into tears at any moment didn’t count as actually crying. “I’m just… that was a lot.”

“Yes.”

“I told you not to do that to me again,” Sasuke said, shakily. “I made it clear you should ask, before just—before deciding something so important. You didn’t listen.”

“Sasuke—”

“You didn’t fucking listen,” Sasuke said, wishing he had the energy for a snarl. “Just don’t fucking talk to me.”

“Mm.”

Sasuke let out a tired, disdainful huff. “Idiot.”

* * *

It was no surprise to Sasuke that all they did that night was sleep. It was wonderful despite the troubling context, despite all that they knew was awaiting them on the morrow.

Itachi’s bed smelled enough like him to be satisfying. Having him there was even better. Before all this, the only times Sasuke could remember falling asleep with Itachi so close were when he was very young, and thus allowed, if not precisely encouraged to curl up right beside his brother when he was too tired to move. He couldn’t remember when he’d grown out of doing that, or why.

He did remember the moment he’d realized his adoration for Itachi wasn’t normal, though. It’d started because of Shisui. Or rather, because of what had stopped with Shisui, who went from almost always hanging around and being supremely annoying to hanging around and constantly touching Itachi, and then to never being around at all.

Itachi had explained, in a patient, slightly amused tone, that keeping your distance from your former partner was a common way of dealing with breakups even when they were amicable. Sasuke, though somewhat confused (he’d found it hard to understand why anyone would stop wanting to be around niisan just because of a breakup), had nodded along and thought ‘good riddance’.

Then, some days later, in the midst of his bitter complaint about how the breakup now meant all sorts of people just happening to walk by when Itachi was training him, Naruto had let out a short, exaggerated scream and said something like “why don’t _you_ date him, then”.

Sasuke still remembered the inner twinge he’d felt, laughing at that, retorting to Naruto’s teasing jabs about how if Sasuke wasn’t a brocon, then no one else in the entire world could be considered one at all. He’d known what the word meant; he’d known he was precisely the kind of person it was supposed to mock.

“I don’t want anything like that,” he’d shot back, when Naruto started saying nonsense about him and Itachi getting married. “I just wish those idiots would leave him alone.” _So he can be with me,_ had gone unspoken, half because he knew how it would make him sound, and half because he couldn’t help but think back to how Shisui used to cling to his niisan, and how it would feel if he was allowed to do that all the time.

Every touch from Itachi had always felt meaningful. Especially back then, when etiquette had just started to come between them, and Sasuke still wasn’t quite used to keeping to the polite arm’s length from anyone he was close to. With Naruto, that extra distance had come as a relief, if only because Naruto was loud and clumsy enough that an extra inch or two away from him could save you from being deafened or dragged down when he tripped over something.

With Itachi, the extra distance had just felt wrong. _He doesn’t even poke my forehead anymore,_ he’d used to grumble to himself. _It’s not fair._ Sasuke thought he’d get over his quiet resentment eventually. That he’d get used to the annoyance of watching someone rub themselves all over Itachi, so long as Itachi picked someone and they treated him appropriately.

But then Itachi didn’t pick anyone, and puberty clawed through Sasuke like a storm. Thoughts of Itachi’s chest had mixed in amongst thoughts of other people’s chests, then increasingly began to dominate just for the sheer forbidden wrongness of the idea of forcibly closing that annoying distance.

Itachi had just moved out around that time, so those thoughts were even more persistent. _I’d punish him like this, and he’d scold me like that,_ Sasuke had thought, guilty and giddy from thinking up increasingly ridiculous reasons that for kind of thing to happen. And then, one dull, rainy morning, he’d dropped by Itachi’s flat to hand off his brother’s portion of the latest weapon shipment, only to run into the half-naked, drowsy, just-showered Itachi.

He’d wanted so much to look, to really look. To take in a couple rudely heavy breaths of his brother’s scent. _It’s just because I haven’t seen him in a week,_ he’d told himself. _And there’s how I keep imagining that nonsense about him, too… I really need to stop that._

But trying to cut Itachi out of his fantasies hadn’t worked. He’d tried the usual sensible things suggested for reducing or eliminating inappropriate fixations, only to find that neither distance or new relationships made him feel better for more than a short time.

Just the process of covertly looking around for information on how the hell to fix things made him want to die. _I’m already avoiding him as much as I can,_ Sasuke had thought, every time he came across a passage suggesting doing that. _Anything more than that will just make it obvious something’s wrong._

And then, late one night: _if I have to give up seeing him to fix this, what’s the point?_

“Masochist,” he’d muttered at himself, but the thought had resonated with him so strongly that he’d tossed aside the book he’d been reading then and there. _I’ll finish it later,_ he’d thought. _Or I’ll just keep looking. Surely there’s something else that would work._ But he’d never really tried.

That this could be happening, that Itachi’s slumbering presence behind him wasn’t some cruel hallucination… Sasuke could only shift under the reassuring weight of his brother’s arm once again, wishing he dared turn around.

He knew this was real, even half-asleep. It was hot enough outside that lying so closely together had long since dampened the back of his t-shirt, and he still felt tender and achy here and there from both the run back and Itachi’s unexpected rut.

He yearned to turn around, even so. What was worse, he feared to. If Itachi wasn’t really asleep…

If Itachi was awake, maintaining those slowed, even breaths just for his sake, all while rethinking the risk they were taking…

Sasuke forced himself to close his eyes.

* * *

The sun was just starting to lighten the curtains over Itachi’s bedroom window when Sasuke’s exhaustion pulled him under. He slept uneasily, trapped in a long, garbled reconstruction of one of his old missions.

In the dream, Itachi was both his intimidation target and his mission partner, and kept staring wordlessly and smirking whenever Sasuke hesitated as a result. Sasuke remembered not working all that well with Ino on that particular leg of the mission, but it had been more along the lines of the two of them being stiff and semi-formal and misinterpreting non-verbal signs.

This, the way Itachi’s hands were lingering on his, drawing out the mere moment Ino had taken in real life while acknowledging his flattery of her for the sake of their cover…

“Otouto,” Itachi said, his voice coming from closer by than was actually possible. “Wake up.”

When Sasuke jolted awake, Itachi was seated nearby, leaning over just enough that Sasuke could see the worried expression on his face. “What’s… ’s there something?”

“No.” Itachi’s hand settled on top of his head, the touch tentative. “It’s only a little late.”

“Late?” Alarmed, Sasuke hauled himself up into a seated position, scrubbing at his gritty eyes. “I’m up, I’ll—”

“We’re not late for anything,” Itachi said, shifting closer. “Okay? Calm down.”

At any other time, Sasuke would have rolled his eyes and muttered something about how he hadn’t really been freaking out, just trying to wake all the way up. But Itachi’s slightly sweaty hand was curled around the back of his neck, and Itachi was leaning in, closer and closer.

He could hear other things than Itachi’s shallow breaths: the light scrapes and thumps of someone moving around in the flat on the next floor, the muffled cadence of a conversation being had in the hallway, the sharp, thin cries of the woman that ran the busy dumpling shop across the street calling out completed orders. None of them seemed to matter.

“Okay?” Itachi asked, quietly. “Can I?”

Breathless, Sasuke leaned forward. It was only a kiss on the cheek, his lips barely brushing his brother’s stubbled skin. It still felt like everything was coming into colour. “You don’t have to ask,” he murmured. “Just do it.”

For answer, Itachi slid his hand up to the back of Sasuke’s head and bent in, nipping at the underside of Sasuke’s jaw. His tongue rasped over the bruised skin just below, tracing the fading evidence of the very first bite he’d given to Sasuke.

He pressed brief, wet kisses all down the line of Sasuke’s throat. His hand stroked through Sasuke’s hair, then curled into a solid grip, forcing Sasuke to arch back.

It was all too obvious what he was after. Each kiss felt like a delay; each lick and bite he bestowed on Sasuke’s collarbones was a tease. His other hand moved from its loose grip on Sasuke’s waist, sliding up beneath the hem of Sasuke’s wrinkled t-shirt.

When Itachi’s hand finally rose up to cup Sasuke’s left breast, he couldn’t help but moan. “Sorry,” Itachi murmured. “I know I’m distracting you from getting ready.”

“Getting ready for what?” Sasuke snapped. “I thought you said there wasn’t—ngh!”

“Hospital,” Itachi said, his voice hatefully even, as if both his hands weren’t currently squeezing and fondling Sasuke’s breasts. “Might as well get that done today, right?”

“I… I guess—don’t—”

“I’ll stop after this,” Itachi murmured. “Just let me play with these a bit? Please?”

Sasuke didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Itachi was definitely teasing him over his tendency for big breasts in this form, or the fact that, annoyed as he was, he still couldn’t muster up enough will to pull away. Then again, when he did pull away, Itachi simply got up to follow him, groping him under the pretext of guiding the way.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve showered in your shitty bathroom,” Sasuke grumbled. “I don’t need your fucking help, niisan. Go away.”

Somehow, things still ended with him on his hands and knees, whining in the back of his throat as Itachi filled him from behind. His knees ached, probably a result of all the kneeling from last night and the unforgiving tile beneath him right now, but that was the only thing that really hurt.

It had shamed him, feeling Itachi’s cock slide in so easily. The thought that all Itachi had to do was squeeze his breasts and kiss him a few times to get him to open his legs was both humiliating and deeply absorbing; each satisfied grunt Itachi let out while inside him made Sasuke clench around him.

_This,_ he thought. _Exactly this…_

Itachi groaned, and Sasuke rocked back, squeezing down instinctively, savouring the telltale twitching of his brother’s cock. “Pour it in,” he heard himself say. “Let it—use me like—”

_Use me like a slut,_ he’d meant to say, only to find the words just wouldn’t come. He’d worried so much over the years, worried about being found out, having his unhealthy, endless need discovered; declaring it out loud was still beyond him.

Itachi bent in over him, stroking a hand up his bare, shaking back. “Mine,” Itachi said, hoarsely. “My slut.” His other hand tightened its grip on Sasuke’s waist, holding Sasuke steady as he pulled out and thrust back in. His balls smacked wetly against Sasuke’s mound, the lewd sound more stimulation than the brief contact with Sasuke’s aching clit.

Itachi continued to thrust into him again and again, leaving him no breath to speak and no will to move. All he could do was accept it, whimpering as he did so. His orgasm washed over him before he even knew it was coming, a raw wave of pleasure that had him trembling in Itachi’s embrace.

“Good?” Itachi said, his tone lazy, his voice breathless. He’d barely slowed those wicked thrusts. “Good enough?”

“No,” Sasuke gasped. That, he could admit. “I want…” It helped so much that Itachi was still clearly interested, still holding him close and pounding into his slick cunt. “I still want…”

“Do you ever not want it?” was the low, wicked answer. “Don’t worry.” One of Itachi’s hands slid down from its grip on Sasuke’s waist, seeking out his clit. “I’ll do my best for you today, otouto.”

_Yes,_ Sasuke wanted to say. _Thank you._ The words came out as a garbled, elongated moan, one that pushed him ruthlessly towards the edge again. That he was this much of a slut, that he couldn’t even thank Itachi for giving him what he so desperately needed—

“Yes,” Itachi growled. “Just like that.” His voice was strained. Gloriously uneven. “Come all over me just like that.”

Afterwards, when Sasuke began to heave himself up from his ungainly sprawl on the clammy, uncomfortable tiles, Itachi’s arm tightened around his waist, keeping him from rising too far. “A little longer,” Itachi muttered. “Stay with me.”

“We have to get up eventually,” Sasuke grumbled. He lay back down anyway, finding satisfaction in the sweaty warmth of his brother’s embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue to follow in a minute~


	7. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Honestly, the two of you are...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the epilogue!

Gossip dogged their heels for a surprisingly long time once it was clear Sasuke had moved in with Itachi for good. The fact that all that resulted from that quiet, yet permanent change was another snot-nosed, prideful Uchiha brat and a short-lived attempt at forming a separate family registry for the three of them didn’t seem to prevent people from settling for a round of guess-the-father whenever they thought Sasuke was out of earshot.

No one dared do the same sort of thing around Itachi, something Sasuke found annoying on a good day and intensely frustrating on a bad one. “It’s like they think I don’t talk to him,” he liked to say, to whoever would listen. Today, that meant Sakura, her answering grunt due to the fact that she was currently seated at his kitchen table, busy gobbling up side dishes in repayment for the gossip she’d just been kind enough to pass on. “Or like I’m so sensitive that I can’t bear to repeat the bullshit they’ve been saying.”

“You don’t see him when he’s on shift,” Sakura said in return, after swallowing heavily. “You can just see people shrivelling inside when they hear he’s assisting instead of Minato-sensei, it’s hilarious.” As if said same people hadn’t seen the way Itachi’s blank, remorseless official gaze softened whenever Sasuke was in the Hokage’s office to report on something. “Ah, I can’t wait to see the fits they’ll throw when he gets the hat.”

“For the thousandth time, Sakura—”

“Yes, yes, yes, he wouldn’t take it if offered, blah blah bullshit,” she said, sullen as anything. “I’ve been an assistant for five damn years, but no, just because Kushina-sama’s Uzu too, it’d be ‘improper influence’ if I went next, but if it’s _Naruto_ …”

“You know very well how easily you can get around that,” Sasuke said, just to be provoking. He pretended, as always, to be annoyed by the resulting rant, even as he marvelled on how similar it was to the way Naruto ranted about Sakura’s malicious obstruction of his gods-given right to the hat.

He and Itachi had a long-standing bet on whether Sakura and Naruto would eventually get married. They both agreed _something_ would happen between the two out of sheer spite and continue much longer than was absolutely necessary, but where Itachi was convinced Sakura would content herself with hatesex and undue influence on the new Hokage’s decisions, Sasuke was sceptical.

_“She’s just as bad as you,”_ Sasuke had said, the most recent time it had come up. _“If it’s something she really wants, she’ll do crazy things to get it.”_

_“If she wanted it that much, she’d finish her reports on time,”_ had been the disgruntled answer. Sasuke’s subsequent joke about how Uzu nin were congenitally allergic to paperwork had seemed to go over well initially, right up until Itachi had him backed up against the fridge and apologizing compulsively for making light of the struggle Itachi went through every week for his sake.

“…and you’re daydreaming about him again, rather than listening,” Sakura said, shaking her head slowly. “Honestly, the two of you are disgusting.”

“Hmph,” Sasuke said, trying to make up for his embarrassed flush with a glare. _Just you wait,_ he thought. _See if I don’t tease you to death when you finally end up with Naruto._ The prospect of that happening within the next week or so (before Sasuke was on mission again, and thus too busy beating up yakuza to remember to gloat) was sadly slim, but he could still hope. “Don’t even think about those croquettes, they’re for Akina.”

“Come on, all ten of them? Can’t she eat literally anything else?”

“Uzumaki-san,” Itachi said, his sudden appearance in the open doorway connecting to the living room making the both of them flinch. “How interesting to find you here.”

“Evening, Itachi-senpai,” Sakura said, rising smoothly from her seat. “Wow, look at the time; I should have been out of here fifteen minutes ago!”

“Ah?”

“Yes,” Sakura said, nodding gracefully, the calm of that movement offset by how quickly she was heading for the side door. “The Kawashima agreement, you know. Have to get started on the second draft.”

“Of course,” Itachi said, returning her nod. “There’s no rush on that, though; it’s only due in a week and a half.”

“Really?” Sakura said, her voice cracking noticeably. “I, uh. I’d still feel more comfortable if, y’know, finishing it this week. Good seeing you—my love to Akina—good night.” And then she was gone, her hasty substitution forcing a few dead leaves through the swinging side door before it shut.

“What?” Itachi said, walking up to stand just behind Sasuke. “So she’ll finish a little earlier than she should. It’ll do her backlog good.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sasuke murmured, with a backwards glance. He’d still guessed, just from Itachi’s earlier, earnestly helpful tone, that there was some pitfall within the encouragement offered to Sakura. “Do you want any of these while they’re out, or do you want to wait for dinner?”

“Didn’t you just say they were for Aki-chan?” Itachi said, even as he followed Sasuke to the table, neatly preventing Sasuke from picking up the bowl of croquettes with a brief, suggestive squeeze of Sasuke’s shoulder. “Let me be the one to put this away.”

“We can’t—”

“Akina’s having dinner at Mother’s tonight,” Itachi said. “Go upstairs and get yourself ready for me.”

Sasuke flushed. He made a point of continuing to replace the lids for the various open bowls strewn on the kitchen table. It made it feel just a little less shameful to give in to Itachi’s blatant command.

He was already half-hard when he opened their bedroom door. Everyone assumed they’d picked such a small house because it was all they could afford so near to the Hokage Tower, but Sasuke could never resist thinking of the truth at times like this, remembering how Itachi had convinced him to settle on one large upstairs bedroom and bath combination upstairs instead of the more expensive two.

_“We’ll manage with her crib in here for now,”_ Itachi had murmured. _“When she’s older, we’ll move her to the spare bedroom downstairs, then seal this space up nice and tight, so she never has to hear her father moaning like the whore he really is.”_

“Look at you, dazing around,” Itachi said now, fondly, even as he stepped into the room. A brief surge of chakra primed the delicate line of seals above the door, their faint glow the only light in the shadowed room. “It’s almost as if you don’t want me to do anything.”

“I was just thinking,” Sasuke said, mulishly, wriggling out of his trousers. “Can’t I even do that?”

“Only if you’re doing as you’re told,” was the low, wicked response. Then, much later: “You know what I want to hear.”

“Please,” Sasuke whispered, his thighs trembling from the strain of having to keep them spread on his own power. “I need it.”

“Don’t make me tell you again.”

Sasuke gulped. “I need it,” he said, huskily, “because I’m a slut.” No, that wasn’t right. He’d forgot something. “I’m…” It was still hard to say, sometimes. “I’m niisan’s filthy slut.”

“Yes,” Itachi said, his cock finally sliding in. “Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still full of love for this crazy story. Not sure if I'll do another editing pass later-- I feel like I maybe needed a more obvious indication that Sasuke got pregnant during his disastrous heat-- but that's all stuff for future me to worry about. Also feel like I focused more on the sex than his actual pregnancy, but oh well /o\\. Hope it was a fun ride for you regardless ;D

**Author's Note:**

> Now, you _know_ I want to hear how you felt, right? :D?
> 
> **Edit:** Fpreg tag removed because it happens entirely off camera /o\


End file.
